Peckris

The only post 1936 penny varieties even approaching collectability are the 1940 single/double line. IMHO! 1946 die flaw?

My understanding is that - Edward 3d bits aside - there are no noteworthy varieties of 1937 coins. You never see them in price guides or offered for sale, so they don't exactly set the world alight. It's probably safe to say from that that there are no rarities among them.

My understanding is that there are no scarce varieties of 1937 anything. Except for an Edward 3d bit of course! At any rate, few people have ever been excited by the penny varieties and that's why they don't appear in most price guides (or any?). Nor have I ever seen a 1937 penny offered for sale by variety, which should give you a clue as to how much they set the world on fire.

here That 3 doesn't look like any 'open 3' I've seen. But then, the coin is too worn to have been manipulated. Hm. I'm not sure what it is, I just don't feel convinced. It seems partway between the two types. I don't like it.

Spink. As far as insurance companies Are concerned it IS the bible.

Yes - the camera is great: same one as yours but the camera is the easy bit: now I am playing with lighting, white balance, exposure, ISO and all that. Just changing one variable at a time for now to see what each one does. Already I can tell which were my early shots though. Bit short of genuine daylight where we are - in a bus under a railway viaduct in a deep valley. So I've bought a selection of different bulbs to try...that edge shot was with an angle poise over my shoulder and a headtorch on! Good shot, but artificial light makes it way too red (easily cured with image processing software).

I frequently find Spink to be the most far out of the major guides, some of their prices are quite baffling and bear no relationship to what coins are going for in the real world. I also think their Unc. price in this case (£50) is pushing twice as much as its actual value even with 95% plus lustre. Spink is fine as a wide ranging guide to what is available, and for all I know, may be reasonably accurate for those really top end coins which none of us can afford. But for the bread and butter stuff that us mere mortals dabble in, it can be quite hopeless. You may say that as the CCGB price is only £5, then you have paid 50p over the top, but what has to be remembered is that between EF (£5) and BU (£35) is a great chasm into which real, rather than theoretical coins will fit. The vast bulk of coins aren't exactly EF or Unc. but somewhere between the two, so on that basis I would consider the £5.50 you paid for a pleasing EF, pretty good value. I'd echo most of this. As a mere collector I used to regard Spink (& Seaby before them) as a "bible" whose prices were holy writ. After dealing for a few years I soon came to revise that opinion. I now tend to regard it more as a sort of insurance table, where you get 2/3 of the quoted price if you suffer a loss. Having said that, I'd say there were collectors out there who would happily pay more than £70 for a genuinely BU 1934 halfcrown - it's quite a rare coin in that condition! Aslo remember that Spinks mean BU when they say UNC. CCGB lists the two separately, and £70 is Chris's UNC price not BU.

Unquestionably ebay is the quickest way to offload stock, but this has to be set against the lottery of the price you wil receive. Another drawback with ebay is that the buyer will invariably use Paypal because it is the easiest option for them. However, if things go wrong and they block your account as they did with mine when I tried to get funds out then your working capital is tied up for the 3 months period you have to allow for resolution before you can pass the case to the ombudsman. Paypal don't offer a one to one for sorting problems, requiring you to communicate by email. Any means of avoiding Paypal is therefore preferable. Yes, a week or weeks can go by without a sale. This is why it is really only feasible to do it as a full time job if you have a guaranteed supply of and customers for large value items. The return on low grade mixed material is greater if you melt it, and much easier to realise. Ebay has a monopoly on crap. Red has covered the insurance question. Just about everyone has a PO Box for the reasons outlined, but that still doesn't stop people being mugged. There have been at least 4 instances of attacks on dealers where stock has been lost in the last two or three years. You have to keep your wits about you. Maintaining a website requires an undue amount of time if you want to photograph as much material as possible. People will always buy what they can see rather than what they can't, that's human nature. I think the trend will be that only high value items will end up on websites. Ebay has such a prolific supply of low grade/value items that frankly, it is not easy to compete and it always offer the chance of picking up a bargain. Conversely you would be an idiot to list high value items on ebay without a reserve, at which point costs become a major issue and so a website offers continuous listing until such time as an item is sold - which can quite literally be years. You can get a lot of traffic onto a website, but how many are different people is open to question and whether they buy anything is in the lap of the gods. I've had about 17000 visits in the first 4 years that the site has been up and running, but that could just as easily be 170 visits from 100 individuals as 17 visits from 1000 people. Most sites don't have a visitor counter, so I can't offer a comparison. You can have as much or as little family time as you decide. Any business at the beginning requires long hours until established. Always assume you will have to pay import vat on coins bought abroad. You can only have a profitable business if you can determine your costs in advance of actually purchasing an item. If the sums don't add up, don't buy. It's always much easier to buy than to sell. My business was already VAT registered before I diversified into coins, so I simply incorporated it into an existing structure, but if you don't have to be registered then I wouldn't bother. Would I want to do it as my sole means of income? No. If you say you want to earn a UK average salary which is in the region of £25K at the moment and you make a 10% return after overheads, you obviously have to sell £250Ks worth to provide the income. You will make more margin sometimes, less on others, but the overheads will always be there. That's a lot of well heeled customers that you have to sell to annually and on a recurring basis. Do I enjoy it? Yes, but it helps to have a laid back disposition. It's probably worth pointing out that plenty of people have a hassle-free experience with PayPal - I have so far (touch wood). I appreciate that doesn't make Rob feel any happier about them, but it might be worth canvassing a wider opinion? Then make your decision.

I want to know what 'NEMATUT' means. Pharoah of Egypt, around 700BC.

That is most amusing. lol And perfectly true! I wonder how many of the around 120,000 coins minted that they managed to acquire to be able to offer them in lots of 100? lol Saying that, as they sell for around £50 in UNC condition maybe a purchase back then may have proved to be a good investment choice. Yes - if you didn't mind waiting 45 years and a twenty-fold rise in the retail prices index I have the feeling that they said it was something like a "special purchase" (it always is) of around 1200? I had heard that the 1960 Crown was a quite hard coin to obtain, but after a recent visit to a Coin Shop where they were selling them for £2 each, I'm not that convinced any more. lol It is nonetheless the most difficult crown after 1937. But you're right, plenty out there.

Yes, that was a fair price, and certainly not a bad buy. I like the toning of it - there may be no lustre but it's attractive and almost looks like it was darkened at the Mint. Nice.

Yes, the reverse legend lettering just doesn't look right - it's too modern-looking, font-wise.

That is most amusing. lol And perfectly true!

... to be sure

My cassette of the Hobbit always evoked the message "Bad block at 6F - rewind tape" , tnen another 10 minute wait Best machine I ever had was my Archimedes, but add ons were just too expensive Back in 1986 I bought a 286 Tandon AT for work for £1000, plus another £1000 for a 100MB hard disk. We marvelled at it saying "We'll never fill that!" David My first (and only) PC was orange text on a black background, MS DOS 3.33, a copy of Mini Office (not a bad little suite of programs actually), and a 20 MB hard drive ... which I only ever half filled. Ah, them were the days.. pre-photos, pre-music (except the little beep tunes you could program), pre-video, pre-graphics cards?, pre-Internet, pre-Word. I remember it was an 8088 AT Turbo. If you flicked the Turbo switch (who wouldn't?) you could increase the horsepower from 4.5 KHz to 9 KHz (do I mean KHz?). Attached to it was a dinky little CRT monitor, a keyboard, and a daisywheel printer.

Four Symbols??? Less Led Zepp, more Space Invader(s) by the look of it

That is very true and very sound advice. Especially when you take into account the issue price for some of the coins. However, I do also think that for someone who does collect such coins that an informed decision needs to be taken at some point whether to decide to buy at issue price and be comforted in the fact that they will own the coin, albeit at an high price, than to have to pay a vastly inflated price in the future if a coin is found to be a scarce or rare issue. I do conceed however that will only occur in certain circumstances, such as the aforementioned £2 Trial Set, and that your advice is very wise indeed. So unusual are the genuine decimal rarities that what you would save not paying the full issue price of everything else would easily pay for the eBay purchase of the rarity.

That is so very true. lol I once saw a £2 coin described as 'Rare x 100 - L@@K!' I'm not exactly sure which rarity system the seller was using, but it looked like a common enough £2 coin to me. lol Hard to beat the late 60s Coin Monthly advert for "the rare 1951 penny" "investment opportunity" "we've acquired a limited number" "state whether you want 1, 10 or 100"

They were collected by his younger self. Pay attention now Peter..... He actually said "gathered up" - bit of a difference!! (Casually, as if not really interested) I'll give you a couple of quid for your 1968 penny. If it's in reasonable condition of course. And English.

You can keep Kylie. Just drop off her cute lil derrière on your way through.

Don't know what lighting he's using, or whether he has the colour temperature on his camera mis-set; but if you turn down the magenta in his pictures, they don't look bad Yes, my thoughts too. Pretty much most of his pictures look too red, so I'd say it's a colour cast imparted either by his camera or his computer. Reminds me of one of the sellers on Online.coins, whose coins are all way way way too red, and filmed against a red background what's more.

That's right. The 1997 issue was held back for quite a while then eventually released. In the meantime, the new Rank-Broadley portrait came out and was used from 1998 onwards. Leading to the public myth : "If you've got the £2 coin where the Queen is wearing a necklace, it's worth a fortune." The 1997 Maklouf £2 was only rare until it was issued, then it wasn't.

They are quite tatty but still good value. The £65 one is the 1960 edition. And pretty ropey as well. 2nd ed. 1964 is the one everyone wants, and they rarely go cheap. Interesting that for once the second edition is worth more than a first!! The same is true of Freeman. It's because these books aren't bought as 'collectables' by collectors, they are bought for their reference value, and both Peck and Freeman have major revisions between first and second editions.

The value of modern commemoratives plummets like a stone on the secondary (second-hand to you and me) market. NEVER EVER pay issue price for anything in the decimal era. If you wait a year or two you can pick them up cheap in any auction.

Very true. Derek's Standard Guide To Grading British Coins is a very good place to start, as it will help you loads when you come to assess any coins you see, and make good decisions. It's got pictures in 4 states of preservation of all major obverse and reverse types of the machine age.