Peckris

Very nice I notice you are missing the first two main types of George V (excluding minor sub-types). Might I suggest a 1920 or 1921 for the first, and a 1927 for the large Modified Effigy? None of those would break the bank. Also, perhaps a 1949 and a 1953 to complete the major 20th Century types?

Well yes - if you're a forger!!

If you think the 'wide date' and 'narrow date' reverses are 'hypervarietal', you need to go and study your Freeman! For utter cr--, see the 1937 varieties

AFAIK the only florin in that series that gets faked is the 1932 (for obvious reasons). The 1935 is pretty common, and has no 'fake collectable' interest.

No, the most boring by far concerns the 1937 penny reverse. There's two MICRO-MICRO varieties, which have something to do with whether the exergue line crosses through a tooth or not. Both are equally common, and I've never even looked to see which mine is, or the proof, as I JUST DON'T CARE

In 1999 perhaps!!! Nowadays, the 'casual' computer user wants somewhere to store and play music, upload pictures from their camera, login to various social networks (which can involve a lot of picture sharing), play (and maybe download) videos on YouTube, play the odd game, perhaps buy and / or rent music and films, listen to live radio or TV online, or catch up on programmes they missed. If they're creative they will also use their computers to make music, edit movies, photographs etc, or write. Jeez Rob, where you bin these last 10 years or so? The same place I was the twenty odd years before - Manchester. Right, lets deal with the list. I don't store music, but do listen to the odd track occasionally on you tube. I upload pictures for the site, though the results are sketchy. Don't do social networks apart from this forum and a couple others. Don't download videos or play games. Don't buy or rent music or films. For the first see above, for the second, films are mostly much the same featuring the same old actors time after time. My kids have watched so many films down the years, I could probably make a collage of the snippets seen in passing and say I've seen the lot. I listen to the radio in the car. Don't listen to TV or radio online and rarely regret missing a TV program. Even if I have missed something it wil be repeated on a choice of channels tomorrow. The surfeit of drivel which passes for programming is on the whole uninspiring. I don't mind the odd documentary, but prefer to get my history lessons from books rather than Hollywood. As I said, it's a tool - not the centre of my universe. Ok, I take your point Rob - however, I'd dare to say you're not exactly the 'average computer user' Most people DO use computers for at least some of the things I listed. By the way, you can say what you like about social networks, but when my mum's brother in the States had a complicated operation recently, we were able to exchange news and get constant updates from his children via Facebook. As there were 6 of us involved in this conversation, email just wouldn't have cut it.

Guilty as charged - I have a very good date run of bronze pennies, but fewer farthings, and even fewer halfpennies. Pre-bronze it's a different story.

For what it's worth (extremely boring as both are very common ), you have an example of each of the two varieties of 1905 penny there. The first has the E of PENNY out of correct alignment - it's parallel to the N and angled away from the P - while the second has the three letters PEN in correct rotation to each other. As I say, it's the second most boring 20th Century variety, but I just thought I'd point it out... (Sorry, I just noticed Accumulator has already mentioned it )

Much nicer names than the above! Agnes and Harriet (and probably Florence too) have made a big comeback in the last decade or so.

That's very interesting - I'd always thought that my 'probably VF' 1903 halfcrown would make more on eBay than anywhere else, but what you say might force me to change that opinion.

In 1999 perhaps!!! Nowadays, the 'casual' computer user wants somewhere to store and play music, upload pictures from their camera, login to various social networks (which can involve a lot of picture sharing), play (and maybe download) videos on YouTube, play the odd game, perhaps buy and / or rent music and films, listen to live radio or TV online, or catch up on programmes they missed. If they're creative they will also use their computers to make music, edit movies, photographs etc, or write. Jeez Rob, where you bin these last 10 years or so?

Yes I'm probably being a bit harsh on the graphics but for what you're paying I just don't think a 775M is good enough. I did say high-end video editing and gaming for which a beast of a card would be better - granted you may not need such a card but £1700 is a pretty good budget for a new machine you could easily accommodate one. Again 1TB is fine but in the context of price I'd like to see an ssd in there. They're edging their way towards being standard issue and many-an-old-laptop could be salvaged just by replacing the hard drive with an SSD - the performance improvements are that significant. I have had problems with a few older webcams and a graphics tablet in the past but you're right probably the whole of the hardware market is writing drivers for macs now that OS X is so prevalent. And actually the latest flavours of Linux don't seem to have too many problems with hardware so this is becoming much less of an issue. I only really had two points to make: (1) that Apple do charge a premium on their products by virtue of the strength of their brand and (2) they do not offer excellent value for money at the hardware level. The first point I haven't really addressed but it's fair to assume that they're not operating on tight margins! And as to the second point I think this is covered. Now, as to what constitutes value is partly subjective - if you're invested in Apple technologies and deem their software to be superior or better-suited to your needs (both in terms of what you need now and what you're likely to need in 2 years time) then excellent: make the purchase and be happy with what is ultimately a very good product. Just to add, are viruses etc. really keeping most IT technicians in business? I don't know that Apple have ever done networking and IT infrastructure that well and certainly when we get to the servers running the likes of Facebook and the BBC you're looking at an operating system like Red Hat. While I agree that Apple probably don't offer brilliant VFM at the hardware level (but then, nor do BMW ), their machines do tend to last quite a bit longer than all but their best rivals. Ok, you might think that means Apple users eventually go out of date more than other users, but 1) Macs are sold more to let people just get on with 'stuff', rather than to geeks, and 2) the number of Windows XP users still around (think Mac OS 9...) is a Big Number. You also mentioned 'the brand', like it's appeared out of thin air. But look at what Apple have done (with the one proviso that a lot of this wasn't their own creation, but they did more to popularise it and make it accessible than most other computer companies) : the first usable, professionally produced home computer - Apple II the first usable GUI - the Macintoshthe first company to make Desktop Publishing a reality the first company to produce a computer for which a killer app was created - the spreadsheetthe first company to produce a truly useful, well-designed MP3 playerthe first company to negotiate musical downloads with major record labels for an online storethe first company to make own-brand computer high street retailing workthe company that transformed smartphones into a completely new user experience and changed the industry forever the company that made touch screens a widely available and useful reality the company that made tablets a practical reality the company that set great store by design, seeing form and function as equally important the company that set great store by 'ease of use' bringing digital devices to the massesYes, that's some brand! And actually, their prices - when you look at everything including bundled software and OS X and quality of components - are much more comparable with PC manufacturers than they were in the 1990s. The gap has been closing, not widening, with (or because of) increased success. That's not to say they don't have their flaws - I'm sticking with OS X Snow Leopard for now as 1) I can still run Photoshop and 2) I don't like the creeping iOS-ification of subsequent OS X versions. Not as many users as have stayed with Windows XP, but a definitely a vocal minority.

I zoomed the screen on my Mac and could just about make it out - never mind that the coins were converted into low denominations, just think what they'd be worth now in UNC! Mind you, the silly girls would have been long dead...

Well there's scope for getting it wrong but it's not that difficult nowadays to piece together a system of compatible components. One thing Windows did get right is support for the myriad hardware available - so long as you go with a known and trusted vendor I don't see too many problems. If you were looking at going down the Intel route you'd have probably only half a dozen motherboards to choose from for any given chipset. As to viruses you're correct but if Apple suddenly consumed the whole of the desktop market I'm pretty sure you'd see many more start to appear. Apple aren't invulnerable (which is why Comet were marketing Macs as "do not get PC viruses" rather than "do not get viruses" hah). Sorry, but most of this is untrue. Well I didn't just make it up!!! The Dell P2815Q is a 28" monitor with a resolution of 3840 x 2160! It's one of the first affordable 4K screens to come to market and has its issues with refresh rates but at £527 is testament to the quality of monitors the likes of Dell and Asus are pushing out now. Mac monitors are excellent but you can find a quality alternative at a similar price point.Bear in mind that the iMac is £1700 and I think it's completely fair to hold the processor to the very highest standards. The i5 is a decent processor but better-performing ones are available if you have this sort of budget. Turbo boost is a bit of a gimmick. Really the fact that a CPU can be boosted to perform a bit more quickly is by the by when you can safely overclock a CPU by a good 0.5 Ghz. The benchmarks (see here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_ddr3_2400mhz&num=2) attest to high speed memory being much better. And while 8GB at 1600Mhz may be enough it's poor for a machine that's costing £1700, especially given that you can get high speed ram at the price I quoted above.Solid state hard drives have dipped to less than 50p per gigabyte of data now. A 250GB solid state drive + a 2TB mechanical drive for additional storage can be had for less than £200 so we're still within budget here.The stock graphics card in Apple's £1700 machine is not very good. It gets killed by the GTX 580 which is two (nearly three) generations old. The GTX 760 will set you back £170, again well within the budget of a £1700 machine. I had a much longer reply, but hit the wrong button and lost it all Ok, point for point : 1. Mac monitors are indeed excellent, which probably accounts for quite a proportion of the cost 2. Macs are sold with Core i7 as well as i5 processors. You pays your money... 3. Agreed 4. All computers are sold with not enough RAM, except for the basics. Mine has struggled along with 4GB for a few years but I'm about to upgrade with another 8GB from Crucial, for £65. It's easy enough to do, even for me. 5. A 1TB HD is standard. SSDs are not yet universal and have their own drawbacks poor memory management - unless usage is spread evenly, they're more liable to bad sectorsyou can delete files from SSDs, but you can't securely wipe them, the only option is to overwrite with new dataThe best compromise I've heard of is hybrid : use SSDs for the ROM so the computer boots up almost instantly, then a conventional drive after that 6.The GFX cards are absolutely fine for video editing - if not, why do so many video editors use Macs? As for ultimate top-end 3D shooter gaming, yes they are a micro community with very demanding needs which Apple won't cater for, as a high proportion of them build their own machines anyway, so I don't accept that point, which has been made - missing the entire point - since the 1980s; it's a well worn chestnut but just doesn't stand up. As for software, yes there's much more available for the PC but a whole lot of it is rubbish; most of the Mac stuff is at least halfway decent. As for hardware drivers, sorry but that's rubbish. Apple just don't write drivers for 3rd party devices, the manufacturers write their own. On the other hand, Apple supplies a few GB of every known printer driver with every new machine, and Aperture comes with import driver recognition for every known camera (at the time). Name me one piece of leading hardware that can't be used on a Mac for lack of a driver?

Thanks Peckris just trying to figure out your logic here. Different legends for Liz II and George VI and one of every effigy of George V. Suppose there'd have to be a darkened penny in there and possibly a KN (but not likely in BU!) for the mint. How about the bunhead coinage what do you reckon? I only really got as far as older features, Heaton mint, younger features and beaded border. Yes, you got my idea. (1945 for a darkened penny, and a 1918KN in VF). For bun pennies, the differences in obverses and reverses are subtle. I'd say a common type of 1860 beaded border, then 1862 or 1863 in EF minimum. 1874 is the first 'aged' obverse (subtle!), and any date between 1889 and 1893 for the last main subtle obverse type. That would also sweep up most of the main reverse types, provided you ignore the 1860/1861 'signature below foot' '..below rocks' '..below bust' 'no signature' variations. For wide / narrow date varieties, both exist for 1875 and neither are especially expensive. For Heaton (H) 1882 is the cheapest option. If you want one bun in genuine BU, 1890-92 are the cheapest, with 1889 not far behind. For halfpennies and farthings there are far fewer variations and also they're more affordable. Thanks Peckris with the halfpennies I've gone 1887, 1875H and 1862, partly because I already have them and partly because I do notice the obverse differences between 1875H and 1887. My thinking is to add a beaded border type and thereafter let funds, availability and desirability of individual pieces dictate whether or not any other varieties are added which probably works better for me. Appreciate the advice, cheers You're lucky with halfpennies - the 1860 beaded border in BU is much cheaper and more available than the toothed variety.

And the massively important third thing is the brand. You're paying more because it comes in a pretty white box and they paid Mitchell and Webb and whoever else to market their shiny products. Their components are, as a general rule, high quality, but not strictly value for money if you're really looking to get juice out of your machine! E.g. the 27 inch iMac at £1,740: 27" monitor, beautiful3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i5Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz8GB (two 4GB) memory at 1600MHz1TB hard drive 7200rpm NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M with 2GB video memoryNot actually very good!! Mac monitors are excellent but you can pick up a high-end 4K screen for in the region of £600 now. The i5 is a hell of a lot cheaper than the i7 and performs far worse. You can get a six-core i7 processor overclocked for in the region of £400. Turbo boost is nonsensical. Just overclock your processor to 4.5 GHz and be done with it. 8GB of ram is piss-poor for a high-end machine. 16GB of ram operating at 2400 Mhz is easily achieved for in the region of £130 A 1TB mechanical hard drive costs about £50. You want a solid state drive nowadays. The graphics card is not particularly good if you want to do any high end gaming or video processing work. As to the operating system debate, well, pros and cons across the board. Mac OS is well-polished but fewer software vendors develop for the platform and support for any hardware that Apple didn't develop drivers for is rubbish. Sorry, but most of this is untrue.

Me too.

I did. I said it was "comparable with the shilling". However, you're right about the damage to the shilling - in addition, it has a bad gouge on the truncation, and similar scratching on the cheek to the sixpence.

Thanks Pies, don't you hate it when you discover scratches or other blemishes for the first time when you photograph the coin!This is exactly why i take hi-res images and post here, so that others may find something i have'nt seenCoin 5 is EF, digs on the OBV, Leaf veins worn, REV left hand thistle has wear along with part of the crown, could be GVF at this rate (sorry) you know how harsh they are Dave, you're only superficially correct. Remember you're looking at a photograph of a sixpence blown up to the same size as pictures of shillings, florins, and on up to crowns. Sixpences are never fully struck up compared to large silver simply due to the physics of getting a complex engraving that small in the first place. That's not say that CGS won't be harsh - they probably will - but we have to make allowances for pictures of small coins where the tiniest flaw is magnified ten times compared to the same size picture of e.g. a crown. I say it as i see it Peck. If its got digs and scratches then its not AUNC, if it has wear on the thistle and crown then its EF and less. Do you think CGS just eyeball a coin and give it a grade? I'm sure it will be done with microscopic Instruments that are much more magnified than a camera.So whats your grade for it Peck? I'll answer that, but first I want to draw your attention to the differences between the shilling and the sixpence, despite the pictures being the same size: 1. the shilling has more evidence of rubbing in the obverse fields - there's apparently none on the sixpence 2. there are fewer hair strands on the 6d, but they are bolder cut, to compensate for the reduced size 3. the laurel wreath leaves are equally unworn, but the raised ribs on the sixpence are less evident due to the smaller design 4. the rose leaves are less complex on the 6d, but equally unworn 5. the 6d crown is much simpler in design - e.g. 13 pearls each side rather than 16; this also applies to the jewels on the headband, almost a different design 6. the lions top left in the small central shield are equally poor, in fact everything is, except for the thing (?) right in the centre If you look closely, there are small differences all over the design, caused entirely by having to reduce them to the size of a sixpence. The one glaring thing is the left hand fleur de lys on the top crown, but that on its own is not enough to say "it's wear rather than die or design reduction". Based on all that, and a VERY close inspection, I would say the two coins are comparable in grade and that this would be most evident in hand, rather than the futile exercise of comparing two pictures that are not even nearly on the same scale. Here is my example in CGS UNC grade (85), so you can compare ... That's a beautiful and well struck up example. However, the two pictures are different sizes, and the toning on yours makes the surfaces less reflective, so it's a little difficult to compare them. Based on that, and the fact that Paulus's picture is at least 8 times life size, I would say that his sixpence is either from a die that's wearing more than your example, or else has a little wear, but only in one or two isolated spots that aren't the highest of the design. I personally would rate Paulus's sixpence at least EF, probably higher, but CGS will probably see things differently.

Then they are suffering from an overdose of egotism. There's nothing wrong with the PC hardware, and even the apple software has bugs looking at the crap that the various ayephones occasionally dispense. Even designer shi*e has a price limit. It's not egotism - it's their EULA. Every software designer (unless open source) has one. For example, technically, only a registered copy of Windows can be installed on a Mac, but Apple's EULA prevents even the reverse of that, primarily because they're a hardware company first, software second. My main problem is that (apart from minor experience with iTunes and iPods which seem to do exactly as they please, whether that's what you want or not) an equivalent Apple laptop to my Toshiba would cost me about twice what I paid. I've not had any problems with what I have and it works the way I want it to. I just can't see the point in paying more for something that doesn't appear to do anything more. *shrug* It's two things : one, the quality of components, which is why you pay more for a BMW than a Ford. Two, the included software for example Garageband and iMovie, makes the overall value of the package much more competitive with your Toshiba than it would be without.

Thanks Peckris just trying to figure out your logic here. Different legends for Liz II and George VI and one of every effigy of George V. Suppose there'd have to be a darkened penny in there and possibly a KN (but not likely in BU!) for the mint. How about the bunhead coinage what do you reckon? I only really got as far as older features, Heaton mint, younger features and beaded border. Yes, you got my idea. (1945 for a darkened penny, and a 1918KN in VF). For bun pennies, the differences in obverses and reverses are subtle. I'd say a common type of 1860 beaded border, then 1862 or 1863 in EF minimum. 1874 is the first 'aged' obverse (subtle!), and any date between 1889 and 1893 for the last main subtle obverse type. That would also sweep up most of the main reverse types, provided you ignore the 1860/1861 'signature below foot' '..below rocks' '..below bust' 'no signature' variations. For wide / narrow date varieties, both exist for 1875 and neither are especially expensive. For Heaton (H) 1882 is the cheapest option. If you want one bun in genuine BU, 1890-92 are the cheapest, with 1889 not far behind. For halfpennies and farthings there are far fewer variations and also they're more affordable.

Most of the software exists for both Mac and PC, e.g. Office. Documents can be ported between the two, no problem. Sage apparently doesn't exist in Mac format, though there are online versions which do. You'd need Parallels on a Mac to run Sage. Apple software cannot run legally on a PC, though I've heard of the 'Hacintosh', so it's been done.

Thanks Pies, don't you hate it when you discover scratches or other blemishes for the first time when you photograph the coin!This is exactly why i take hi-res images and post here, so that others may find something i have'nt seenCoin 5 is EF, digs on the OBV, Leaf veins worn, REV left hand thistle has wear along with part of the crown, could be GVF at this rate (sorry) you know how harsh they are Dave, you're only superficially correct. Remember you're looking at a photograph of a sixpence blown up to the same size as pictures of shillings, florins, and on up to crowns. Sixpences are never fully struck up compared to large silver simply due to the physics of getting a complex engraving that small in the first place. That's not say that CGS won't be harsh - they probably will - but we have to make allowances for pictures of small coins where the tiniest flaw is magnified ten times compared to the same size picture of e.g. a crown. I say it as i see it Peck. If its got digs and scratches then its not AUNC, if it has wear on the thistle and crown then its EF and less. Do you think CGS just eyeball a coin and give it a grade? I'm sure it will be done with microscopic Instruments that are much more magnified than a camera.So whats your grade for it Peck? I'll answer that, but first I want to draw your attention to the differences between the shilling and the sixpence, despite the pictures being the same size: 1. the shilling has more evidence of rubbing in the obverse fields - there's apparently none on the sixpence 2. there are fewer hair strands on the 6d, but they are bolder cut, to compensate for the reduced size 3. the laurel wreath leaves are equally unworn, but the raised ribs on the sixpence are less evident due to the smaller design 4. the rose leaves are less complex on the 6d, but equally unworn 5. the 6d crown is much simpler in design - e.g. 13 pearls each side rather than 16; this also applies to the jewels on the headband, almost a different design 6. the lions top left in the small central shield are equally poor, in fact everything is, except for the thing (?) right in the centre If you look closely, there are small differences all over the design, caused entirely by having to reduce them to the size of a sixpence. The one glaring thing is the left hand fleur de lys on the top crown, but that on its own is not enough to say "it's wear rather than die or design reduction". Based on all that, and a VERY close inspection, I would say the two coins are comparable in grade and that this would be most evident in hand, rather than the futile exercise of comparing two pictures that are not even nearly on the same scale.

Here is a representative and inexpensive type collection of BU 20th Century bronze : Pennies : - any from the 1960s - 1953 - 1949 - 1937, 1938, 1947, or 1948 - 1936 - 1927 - 1920 or 1921 - 1912H (EF with lustre) - 1902 (you could also add a high grade Low Tide) - 1901 Halfpennies : - any after 1957 - 1953 - 1952 - 1937, 1942, 1944, 1945 - 1928 or 1936 - 1926 - 1924 or 1925- 1902 - 1901 Farthings : - 1954, 1955 or 1956 - 1953 - any from 1949 to 1952 - any from 1937 to 1948 (1938 is tricky in BU) - any from 1928 to 1933, or 1936 - any from 1919 to 1924 - 1911 or 1917 (darkened) - 1902 - 1901 That wraps up the 20th Century. It gets more complex the further back you go, but that little lot would cost you a few hundred only in BU.