Peckris

Yes, the dies suffered weaknesses in those early bronze years - 1860 and 1861 particularly are notable for letters not fully struck up. What's more interesting is that lighthouse - it looks for all the world like a Saturn V about to blast off from Cape Kennedy

In the USA version of eBay, all identities are protected, except the winner! BC Same in UK eBay - if you look at the bids it just says "Bidder 1, Bidder 2" etc, so I'm not quite sure what was meant above? And here, even the winning bidder is anonymous. The only thing you can do, is click on each bidder's recent bids, though it doesn't tell you much really, except you can spot dealers who are bidding on certain classes of items and who have made 12 bids in the last hour say. But there is no identification, none whatever.

Thanks for that Mat - interesting, I don't think I'd have noticed that scam, but then it's not my expertise. I only have one Morgan dollar (bought years ago), late 19th century but strongly prooflike, with frosted design and mirror fields (I'm told it's not a proof though, but if someone had told me it was, I'd have believed them!)

Welcome to the forums damian The most likely explanation is that the coin was struck on a blank intended for another denomination (often in these cases, it's a foreign coin blank that's got into the wrong tub), and slipped through the inspection. As a curiosity it's certainly worth keeping.

OH MY GOD I've looked at London Coin Auction lots before, usually to depress myself how strict their grading is compared to everyone else's. Today I decided to have a look at their Coins For Sale .... DID I FALL INTO A PARALLEL UNIVERSE ??? Try this for size : 1967 halfcrown BU ----- TWENTY POUNDS 1966 penny BU ----- FIFTEEN POUNDS Who, outside a lunatic asylum, would pay that money for those coins??? And, to make matters even more surreal and bizarre - THERE IS PROVENANCE !! On a 1967 halfcrown??? On a 1966 penny ????? I must stop eating cheese before going to bed - it gives me these outrageous dreams Seriously though, to quote a certain Mr McEnroe, "they can not be serious !!!" There is something seriously twisted here, but I can't pin down what. Under no circumstances are 1967 halfcrowns and 1966 pennies rare, and nor will they ever be, in the same way as time has shown with 1758 silver, 1787 shillings and sixpences, 1887 Jubilee Head silver, Constantine bronzes, 1936 coins, etc ... once a glut, always a glut. But actually, their prices are demented right across the board, though none quite as insane as those 1960s items.

1950? I'd guess probably "yes", but I'm prepared to bet that there was some late George V and lots of George VI circulating around in high grade ... unless of course, the banks had started to pull them in after 1946, like they did after 1920. In which case, I'd say there were probably quite a few being harboured in tea caddies and drawers

If you look again at those two pennies, the wear patterns are a bit illogical - on the second, the date is more worn, but the H is just still visible. You'd expect with the extra wear that the H would be completely gone too. On the first penny, everything is gone nearly, except for the date numerals, which have lasted much better.

scott, the second example is a whole grade better than the first, really it is. I wouldn't look at that first example, but if I didn't have a 12H, that second one is good for a bid. It's the difference between NF and NVF (or GF+ if you're being strict).

Can you post the link please Mat?

Don't tell the Irish, but actually the British had quite an involvement until ... well, the present day!! And anyway, that interesting piece looks like a product of Boulton's - produced on commission perhaps. To differentiate from currency, they have used the name IRELAND instead of the usual HIBERNIA, but it is strongly reminiscent otherwise of a George III Irish halfpenny. But I don't know anything more about this specific piece.

Agreed. My own philosophy (which I admit may not be mainstream) is to 'type collect' which means settling for a commoner coin in BU, then buying rarities or varieties that interest me, in as high a grade as seems reasonable on my budget. Some years ago that meant (e.g.) an 1871 penny in CD, but nowadays in VF. At the end of the day, it is only the "prestige feeling" of owning something that no-one else has, and for me, that's barely worth three figures, let alone four or five.

Spot price for silver today is about £200 for £5.25 face. As high as that? Well, someone still paid £120 over the odds! Crazy.

£320 for THIS lot??? http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/5-guineas-pre-1920-s...#ht_1095wt_1007 Someone must have a lot more money than sense. £5.25 face value of pre-1920 silver would fetch ... what ... £100, £110, tops? As coins, rather than silver, they are just poor (well, VG+ which amounts to much the same thing for what are likely to be pretty common dates).

That's how I started out, collecting from change, 40 years ago. I would love to have been around in those days of circulating lsd. Not that you had that long. It would have been good to have been 12 about 1950, with about 20 good years of collecting from change, possible I may be wrong, Gary, but I would bet that only the older bronze remained in active circulation, and that you hardly ever got older (say pre 1920) silver in your change. Not sure why I say that ~ just a strange hunch. Did you ever get a pre 1860 young head penny from your change ? You're pretty much right - in the late 60s you would still find a few old bronzes, but many more if you got 5/- bags from banks and looked through them. Pre-1920 silver was virtually impossible to find in change, but pre-47 came along fairly often, though never in grades you'd get excited about. My haul (from memory) was a 1926ME penny, two 1936 EF, a handful of 1946 mint dots, a 1953, a few nice halfpennies : 1909 GVF, a 1935 EF lustre, a 1938 Unc lustre, 1952 GEF lus, 1953 GEF lus, and a 1949 3d bit. Not too much to boast from wasted lunchtimes spent pestering the banks. One thing wrong with your 1950 12-yr-old theory : back then, a kid wouldn't have had enough pocket money (if any) to keep any decent silver coins that came his way! I grew up in Liverpool too! Well, nearby : Crosby, which makes me a woollyback I suppose. But I didn't get any interest in coins until we moved away. I do remember I went back in the 70s and discovered The Liverpool Coin and Medal Company (I think that was its name?) in the city centre. They sold me a near VF 1904 halfcrown for £12, which still has pride of place in my collection.

Nice! I think ur right chris - it doesn't look like a HT. The other sign to look for is how close the shield is to the border teeth, bottom left. if there is any kind of a gap, it's the normal variety. But despite the green patination yours is still in quite a nice preserved state.

It's actually more interesting than even he realises. Not only is it 1952, but it is combined with the later obverse used from 1954. You can see an unbarred H of Elizabeth at about the same level as the chin and the II below it. The earlier obverse has both H and II at about chin level to allow space for the BRITT OMN. Somebody put him out of his misery.....please. Ah, but what we fools fail to realise is that 1952 is only 4 years after aliens landed at Roswell - clearly they had a tachyon inverter beam used as a phase inverter, stray particles from which were reflected from a strange weather formation over Tower Hill, giving one of the Mint employees a weird timeslip vision of the future, two years' hence. This employee, working on proto-brass 3d patterns, subconsciously realised that BRITT OMN was to be soon removed from the legend, and omitted it from the pattern, this being an FDC example of the final result.

I THINK I can see it. It's very faint but I think it's there. Let's face it, the date is high in the exergue, at just the right height it should be if there was an H there.

The dead giveaway is the word O N E - on the normal one, the N is closer to the E than the O, and at a slightly strange angle. On the high tide it's more in alignment. Anyway, I'm hoping chris puts up his pictures of his penny before too long, then I can decide whether to make him an offer.

I haven't managed to find one. I phoned Spink earlier today, they don't have the book in stock, but I did manage to find an old thread on here which gives JJerrams address as: PO Box 63, Stockport, Cheshire, SK4 5BU That's as far as I have got..... You could try that address - I wrote to him once to get the booklet, and we had a laugh about his postcode. By the way, my edition is 1999, but in it he talks about the 'previous issue', so there must be a very rare first strike somewhere !!

I think it is possibly just a damaged numeral, or a damaged die (it doesn't have the characteristics of an overstrike). But it's a good price, even for an 1853.

You multi-posted chris (tsk tsk) - please see my reply in the other thread, thanks.

I definitely have an interest, I've been looking for one for quite a while. But before going further, could you upload a scan of both sides of it (or a photo)? Many thanks!

I definitely wouldn't bin it. The 'worn die' theory is sound enough, but that looks like a 7 that never had any trace of a serif - you'd think there would be some faint trace or portion, but there isn't.

It could be : either a brass gaming token - these were common in the 18th and 19th Centuries, usually featuring imitation gold coins of George III or Victoria, either with a false (i.e. impossible) date, or a spurious legend. Not sure I ever remember seeing a William III example though. or it is a brass coin weight. The legend "1/2 GVINEA W" would make that a strong candidate.

Hi paul - Welcome to the forums. The overall 1868 mintage figure is 1,457,280 but there's no guarantee they were all actually dated 1868. And no separate figure for the error (there never is). CCGB 2007 gives £40 in Fine and £100 in VF. Yours needs a gentle wash in warm soapy water using a non-abrasive cloth, but it certainly gives the impression of being a VF (but dirty!) coin.