Peckris

Red makes some excellent points. What's needed is a modern comprehensive survey of dealers and collectors, to get some idea of the remaining proportions of high grade coins. Mintage figures are more or less meaningless now - as already mentioned, 1950 and 1951 pennies were hyped as great rarities in the 60s, great for investment - they proved to be neither, and probably only the tiniest proportion of them got melted down. I'd just like to add one more point - there is a distorting factor in the coin market, seen in all price guides, which is best illustrated by the 1893 and 1894 halfcrowns. CCGB 09 lists them as follows : 1893 £90 UNC £120 BU (mintage 1,792,000) 1894 £120 UNC - - - BU (mintage 1,524,000) Note the very similar mintage figures. Yet despite this, most dealers will tell you how common the 1893 is in high grade (it's the first year of a new issue or reign - very often put aside, and therefore common), and how scarce and 'difficult' the 1894 is. From this, you would imagine that the 1894 should be worth at least twice as much, but it's not, nothing like. Enter the distorting factor : people who collect by 'type' - and that's probably the majority of serious collectors - will want the best example they can get of a series, not the rarest. Therefore they will flock to the 1893 halfcrown as they can more easily pick up one of that 'type'. This then pushes the price of the 1893 up, due to demand, and closes the gap somewhat with the 1894. That's just one example out of many I could have chosen. So even price guides don't tell the whole story about rarity, only about market forces driven by supply and demand.

The only surviving specialist coin magazine is "Coin News" (monthly - full title "Coin & Banknote News"). If you buy the latest issue of that, you will find dealer adverts and small ads and classifieds, plus there should also be a full event calendar showing all the major fairs. The magazine is usually available in WH Smith.

Online translators are quite often absolute rubbish, and they are totally unable to deal with abbreviations. My GCE French says : "History of the Revolution; and of the restoration of the Empire and the Monarchy, from 1830" "Produced (published) by the Purrat Brothers at Paris" (they must have missed the accent from à ) I know nothing about the piece, other than to say it is a handsome looking medallion and worth keeping hold of.

It's worth keeping your eyes open - there are a few bronze coins from the "artificial darkennig" years that have escaped with full lustre. Without being worth a huge fortune, they certainly fetch more than the normal variety.

Those 1964 halfpennies certainly look BU (i.e. with full mint lustre) from the photo - not so sure about the pennies, one has green marks on the reverse. Elizabeth II BU pennies 1961 - 63 are slightly less easy to find these days.

If you're a new collector, forget about tracking down bargains (unless you happen to find them in the course of your searches, but remember that what may seem like a bargain to a newbie may in fact be a dodgy item). The best places to buy to begin with are : • established dealers, especially ones who are members of a professional trade organisation; befriend one and buy from them and you will learn a lot about coins in return - you sound like you've made a beginning with one already • from coin fairs - but again, seek out the established dealers, though they will have less time to offer you (but prices are often lower at fairs) • attend an auction or two, without buying anything until you are a lot more knowledgeable - using your reference books and actually handling coins and talking to dealers are the best ways to get experience • avoid eBay for now unless you are very sure of yourself or you have very good advice, for two very good reasons : (1) there is so much very very ordinary material (aka rubbish) there, most of which should be left well alone, and (2) the better item often goes for way over book price (as you've noticed) being bought by collectors with more enthusiasm than commonsense; dealers avoid eBay like the plague Biggest tip? Become good at grading coins. That Rotographic guide will help immensely. Good luck, and remember you can get a lot of help and advice here. We will even advise on eBay lots, as long as you post the url to them in these forums.

Thanks for that josie - some very interesting films there

And God bless Tiny Tim!

In my opinion it may be a recut 8 - if it is over a 3, then it's a totally different type of 3 than the one already in the date, so I'd have thought "unlikely"?

Condition is only Fine - unless rare, probably not worth very much

The condition is Fine - don't know about Commonwealth unfortunately.

Yes - it looks artificially gilded. (I have two George IV farthings with gilding, both high grade, but sadly worth only a fraction because of the gilding.) I'm surprised they did that to a 1917 - production of half sovs for UK currency had already ceased, and from 1918 farthings were once again given normal Mint lustre, rather than artificial darkening.

I'm slightly dogding the actual question as this isn't my favourite book (Peck has a lot in its favour), but a fascinating item I picked up in an auction is a Spink publication from 1925, "The Milled Silver Coinage of England". In its layout you can immediately see where ESC got their design from, as it is arranged exactly the same way, but with the value in certain conditions as two extra columns. It's all the more interesting when you realise that THESE ARE SPINKS' SELLING PRICES FOR THE TIME. I.e. you could use the book to order actual coins from. A BU 1905 halfcrown for 15/- (75p) anyone? And yet, they also say of Edward VII silver in general, that many coins for that reign are scarce. It was a fact known even 85 years ago!

Welcome to the forum Mick and Merry Christmas. You will see in other threads that individuals have coins for sale; one person has kilos of them! This is going to sound dreadful because I wrote one of the books above, but before you start collecting seriously, it may help to read up a bit on the subject so you know what you are looking at. I would recommend that at least initially, you don't specialise in any particular denomination, but buy a mixture of coins at the lower end of the market, just to see what it is that gets you going, and e-bay is usually OK for this; any mistakes can easily be sold on. The advice usually is to buy the best you can afford and whilst this is generally good advice, you could easily blow your entire budget on one coin - and one coin does not a collection make! I could go on for ever, but it is Christmas day and I've got a turkey to stuff... I pretty much agree with all this, except the stuffed turkey Red was too modest to say so, but his book on grading - all the main designs of English coins in several grades, from 1797, is an excellent place to begin, and would give you an insight to one of the most important aspects of collecting - condition. After that, the Collectors Coins GB series is the best-value coin guide around, as it lists even more varieties than Spink's Standard Catalogue but costs about a quarter of the price. Those two books, which should cost you around £15 the pair, would see you through for quite a time. (Both books go back as far as 1797, for earlier coins come back here and ask again.)

I'll add my five cents (or should be that five shillings ... or should that be five pounds? ) I basically agree with both side of the argument : 1. Collect what you enjoy collecting (though when it comes to modern commems, NEVER pay more than face value for a crown, i.e. £5 : "Royal Mint packaging" suffers more depreciation than anything else in numismatics - £4 for a tatty bit of coloured cardboard, anyone? - and modern auctions find it hard to shift these items and you would never get a return on the price you paid). 2. There is an awful lot of rubbish produced nowadays; remember, none of these commems is a coin, they are only glorified trinkets, and you only have to look at how the QE2 section of the Spink catalogue has swollen since 1985, to appreciate that. If you're serious about crowns, you could avoid these modern things and save up your pennies for the series 1887 - 1901, which is the best value place to start, and where you can pick up some reasonably high grade crowns for not too high an outlay.

The grade looks Good Fine or thereabouts. Unless it is rare, I wouldn't imagine it is worth very much, but if you go to your local city library, Reference section, and see if they have an edition of Krause (an international coin guide - you need the 20th Century edition), you can get a rough 'ballpark' figure.

Harder to say with this one. Someone has managed to remove the royal portrait and Britannia, without defacing the legend; the penny is still a perfect shape too. I'd keep it as a curio, which it certainly is, and hope someone can shed some light.

That would be useful - do you have any more information josie? (But generally, a microscope would get too close to the surface - in my experience, something with a range of magnification at least 4x going up to 16x could help with those obscure varieties).

No two people ever agree on grading - I'd describe the reverse as definitely Fine, with the obverse falling short of Fine. But I'd agree that the value is between £10 - £12.

You're welcome - thank you for showing us your 1937 "flat sea" halfpenny

1) Do i leave the coins as they are or do i try an attempt to clean them? DON'T CLEAN THEM !! NEVER EVER EVER 2) Do members of this forum have knoweldge of Commonwealth coins? There will be members who do 3) I have got a lot of coins (mainly pennies or half pennies0 that are for want of a better word "flat". Is there any point in trying to do anything with these or should just put them in a "copper pile". If any of them are bun pennies and likely to be rare dates (e.g. 1869 1871 for pennies) and you can read the date, those are worth keeping hold of, the others are scrap as you say 4) Am i right in thinking these were made from copper? bronze - which is mostly copper 5) After seeing some of the points that collectors pick up on with coins, for me (not a collector) what would be the best way & cheapest to veiw the coins i have been given, good magnifying glass or microscope? A microscope would be overkill for any coin - a decent glass or lupe would be good, but if the coins are as rough as you say, it might be a wasted investment

The reason Mahogany is the wood of choice for coin cabinets is because it is supposed to not effect the coin contain within. You're right Gary - but I've noticed a similar effect. I have two mahogany cabinets - one with trays that have punched holes for each coin, where there is no toning, and one without punched holes, just open trays, and here there is toning to some coins. For bronze and copper, it may just be a thin film over the coin, which is gently removable with a micro-fibre cloth. With silver, it is what is generally referred to as "cabinet toning", but really that's not a problem either as this is usually attractive and in no way detracts from the value of the coin. But, the storage conditions should be dry as possible, with even humidity.

I'm not so sure. The artificial lustre - if that's what it is - is pretty clear in certain places (it's not an overall effect like a scanner would give) - check out the exergue, the folds in the material, and between the legend, especially. There's a pinkness there, which in other places is much darker, nearer to bronze.

You might be interested in this picture : On the top, the 1903 penny photo uploaded by the seller, which made me interested enough to bid for it (I had to increase the image size three-fold to get a decent picture, so it looks rather fuzzy and grainy). Below, my own scan of it when it arrived at Peckris Acres. As I'm sure you can very easily see, a quite possible "open 3" turns out to be nothing of the sort.

Oh the fabulously rare George VI hammered halfpenny !!! Well, there were certainly steamrollers around until the 1970s? 1980s? Looks like this one got royally rollered.