Peckris

The best part is I have both the picture and the unsullied original coin.

Just as an added note - the Mint charges a ridiculously high premium for new issues; proof sets regularly appear a few years after their issue at a vastly reduced price on what's called the 'secondary market'. If you were interested in getting older sets, e.g. 1970 - 2005, you could buy them at auction for maybe half book price or even less.

The problem is, our penny goes back to the Roman denarius, so it's 2,000 years old. Unlike the pound which as a coin is not much more than 200 years old. Having said that, our bronze coins are worth less in real terms than farthings were in 1960 when they were demonetised. So my vote would be get rid of our useless bronze coins, they're more trouble than they're worth rename another coin as the 'penny' - candidates for that...?

I concur - looks classic acid attack (thin, lightweight, super-blurred shallow detail).

OK - here's a simply gorgeous Anne shilling, which has iridescent hues of blue, magenta and gold, gradually acquired from years of toning in Adobe's labs

But I already HAVE eBay as a bookmark! As I said, it takes me to My eBay - the sign in page. As my bookmarks bar is full, with Pinterest, my blog, Library Thing, MacWorld, Audible, another forum, a writers' social network, iPlayer, Artwiculate, another forum, TV guide, Twitter, Facebook, here, a Writers' forum, Apple, Google Maps, YouTube, Wikipedia, another forum... why would I want TWO eBay bookmarks and where would I fit them????????

ROFL. I've just thought of the way I could "enjoy" the best of both worlds : take photos of my entire collection, then run each photo through Photoshop applying vast amounts of the Hue / Saturation filter to selected parts, while leaving the original coin untouched!! I'll try and remember to make a start tomorrow and show you the first attempt

If you're happy to be a 'type collector' rather than go for date runs, you might find that copper from 1800 - 1900 meets your requirements; start with the 1799 halfpenny (or 1797 cartwheel penny, though in VF that might cost you £25 - £35), and work through pennies, halfpennies and farthings of each major type and each reign. You're looking at a total collection of around 25 - 30 coins from 1797-1900.

You could just paste it directly into the eBay home page, you don't have to sign in.It's a real pain for iPhone uses, as eBay will not let you take a link! It's possible to add links for just about every other webpage you come across, just not the eBay pages for some reason! Really sorry about that, Peck, it does rely on others kindly adding the link, which I myself always do for others if I'm on a PC and have viewed the eBay item in question! It's a nightmare, don't be cross with us poor smartphone users! I still want to join in! Then I'd have to have the steps : 3. type 'eBay.co.uk' into Google 4. click the eBay page in the list of Google links on page 1 You see, my bookmark, unsurprisingly, takes me to MY eBay where I have to sign in - if I didn't want to go to my eBay, I'd have to search for eBay in Google. Makes sense, right? Thanks Paulus. I don't a have a permanent tab open for eBay (it would just add to Safari's bloat, along with iPlayer, TV Guide, two other forums, Facebook - I try to keep the number of open tabs to the minimum possible, but I still have to quit Safari and relaunch sometimes when my RAM is nearly all used up.) I rarely go to eBay except for what you guys post in this forum, or the once-in-a-blue-moon that I buy some household item.

This is the only AT Morgan I want:

Link Click on link, get taken by browser directly to webpage. key Command-[ when done, to go back.No link move mouse to beginning of eBay item number, drag through to end and then click Command-C to copy key Command-T to open new tab in browser click eBay button in browser's bookmark bar sign in to 'My eBay' (which is where the button takes me) click in eBay Search field, then key Command-V to paste eBay item number click Search key Command-[ 2 or 3 times when done, to go back.

Yes, there were an encouraging number of posts that dissed the whole AT phenomenon, and I'm sure they weren't all Brits! For me, only "Icy Perfection" looked 100% natural, though "Blue Suede" and "Salamander" could have been too.

Ended What has? There's no link

There's one question we haven't discussed. What was so significant about the date 1839 that it was used on proof sets for such a long period? Victoria's accession was 1837 so that couldn't be anything to do with it.

Very interesting to read of your British connections, Arthur. Yes, you're right that a scarce coin needs to be in a higher grade to be worth anything much. However, there are exceptionally rare varieties of some Victorian bun pennies that would fetch literally a few thousand $ even in the grade of your 1864. But as only a few of each exist, the chances of finding one are ... remote, to say the least!

The Lion and Key is a classic English note: And a lovely Britannia: Thanks for that. Yes, I treasure mine. It's sobering to think they were circulating when I was a little boy, but I don't ever remember seeing one (but then, why would I!). My earliest 'fiver' memory is of the blue fivers that came immediately after these. Though why they replaced such a beautiful design...

Vastly overrated at that sort of price IMO Perhaps so Peck, but lets not forget that it was actually for sale at 12k so Platt had to put out in a fair chunk to pull out a profit, lets not assume he got this privately as we know he mostly buys from auctions and scours the internet worldwide like the Rest of us do. He would have paid a nice price for this. If you had the money Peck, would you have turned it down saying its overpriced? Would you have offered him half his 12k only for him to laugh at you?Yes. Because I could get some wonderful early milled for that kind of money, and no doubt an EF 1905 for a couple of grand if I really wanted. Or an underrated Unc 1908 or 1909 for less than a grand.

Vastly overrated at that sort of price IMO

That second obverse doesn't look like any I've seen before! The moulding around the facial features just isn't 'Wyon' enough for me - for example, the crease of the cheek/mouth is almost missing, and there is a line within the eye/nose contour that simply shouldn't be there. I wonder what is the story behind that one? You can't put the differences down to mere lighting or photography. I think there's something in that, but it only works one way : a less than perfect edge/rim/teeth COULD be a proof as you say, but coins that are 'prooflike' are only so in relation to fields and design not to edge/rim etc, which cannot be 'prooflike' as their treatment on genuine proofs is very different.

Yes, I agree with you. I don't really collect decimals myself (apart from a representative collection of proof sets and BU sets), but there's no arguing that that 1983 2p is THE major modern rarity, unless the aquatics 50p rivals it for numbers. So you won't find snobbery here about it. Having said that, if you asked me if I'd rather have the 1983 2p or a really high grade William III halfcrown, I'd go with the halfcrown every time

Yes, I think they all look like proofs now. But you're right - what's with three separate obverse types for a proof-only issue? Perhaps they are not so much proofs as patterns, trialling different obverses, perhaps even at different times.

You're all talking about a coin and no-one's posted a link!! Would someone mind...?

It's only an opinion, but I'd say that 2 and 3 are definitely proofs. It could be argued that 1 is currency - there's an unevenness to the teeth.

There's a useful thing in Safari which has an option called 'Reader' (but it's not there in this forum sadly) which when you click it, opens the page as a text file overlay with just the relevant pictures in it, no adverts, no extraneous or irrelevant stuff. You can then Save the overlay as PDF via your Print dialogue, which is a whole lot less file space used than saving a page as a web archive. We can now have up to 1000 conversations Chris - from 50? Wow.

Yes, thanks