davidrj

All 1954 coins have new obverse without BRITT OMN, so genuine

I'm no metallurgist, but I suspect either die degradation or metal flow rather than a font change

Mine appears to have straight bottomed E and normal die axis

I think we are talking worn die on these

See http://www.predecimal.com/forum/topic/8270-an-interesting-1898-penny/?hl=%2B1898+%2Bpenny

Happy birthday

Not sure whether this is the right place to post this, as I think these are clashed dies rather than die varieties First image shows a flaw half way up the trident stem The second image has the same flaw, but very strange flaw on and below George's ear, there are also two die cracks on the 2nd G of Georgius and the E of dei I seem to remember that Peck mentions a "birds foot flaw" but I've never seen it illustrated in any of the catalogues

Exactly! His BP1875 Cd was from memory from a coin he saw back in 2000, I wonder if he got the die pairing wrong??? I would classify my coin as BP 1875 B L+ja. It's odd the rev has the trace of the cannon ball and a very obvious die crack, which would go along with the theory it was caused by a piece of grit. But a piece of grit affecting two different die pairings in exactly the same place???? beggars belief

My 1875 cannon ball with the grit affecting the obverse die too, as predicted by Gouby in his footnote to BP1875 Ce, I suspect his BP1875 Cd is an error

V.E. III's coins are the most falsificate in Italy because there are a lot of collectors and in genaral have high prices .. However It's strange because this coin is rare but not too muchu Someone liked it, just gone for $625 (£404)

I have one, this was in my cache of buns saved from circulation, quite clear in hand but difficult to get a good image

Oh dear are we starting to get fakes of rare bronze now? this is a rare coin with a mintage of just 250,000, and poor survival rate in the tropics - but this 4 Bese of Italian Somalia has to be cast surely a real one in high grade here

Fascinating link, 47 yrs after the introduction of the new fangled bronze coinage, we are now 45 yrs since those first decimal sets were issued The question remains as to why there are so many varieties of the early bun bronze, was it down to lack of experience of the Royal Mint or the utter incompetance of Watt and Co who had received the contract for the job. Heatons, who took over the task certainly had the experience; they ran the French Mint in Marseilles, producing high quality bronze 1,2,5 & 10 centime pieces 1853-7 totalling 6,200,000 Francs. Likewise production concurrently by the other French Mints all with identical dies produced in Paris

Me too, Stay strong Peter

I think it's also a generational thing, a new tranche of collectors now have no experience of pre decimal UK coinage, and are taking an interest in change in their pocket so we get threads like this one on decimal pennies, or a recent thread in another forum on 2p varieties. If and when a future author produces a detailed work on the decimal issues listing these and other varieties, interest will be engendered and new discoveries may well be made We still await a fully comprehensive study of George V pennies

I think that's another wide one, we are talking micro-varieties here, I tried searching my stache of duplicates with a loupe and quickly lost the will to live, my scan below of 1918 KN varieties shows the very slight difference in the N relative to border beads, very difficult on worn examples

link

This one came up as a suggested alternative to the link above 1918 penny different rock looks like a interesting filled die to me, but don't think I'll be shelling out £199.99 to examine it more closely.

It,s one of those oddities of collecting, this one doesn't appear in Freeman or Gouby, and is only in Peck as a footnote, so tends to be ignored, whilst the 1897 and 1946 dot pennies are far less dramatic but attract a premium as they appear in listings. I think definitely a die clash I wonder if anyone has looked to see whether the bird's foot occurs with both the wide and narrow KN types, both your coin and mine are wide KN

Awful news. Sincere condolences David

We now have the definitive guide to classifying regular contributors to this forum

I've just spent $20 on a truly horrible coin, but it filled my last gap in the series of French bronze 10 centime pieces (1852-1921) The 1878 K Bordeaux mint has a recorded mintage of 100,000, but probably the vast majority were dated 1877, and is the rarest of the series (Ok there is a very rare variety of 1897 - 3 known) much harder to find than the 1871 K (mintage 26,500) and catalogues at €150 on Good (B10) I tend to buy interesting coins by type these days, but at heart I guess I'm still the one trying to fill all the gaps in my Whitman folders

Here's a detailed image I emailed the editors of "Le Franc" at CGB and got this reply "Dear Sir, We thank you a lot for this information. We got once that coin with the reversed shell... but we didn't notice it. Can we publish the photo of your coin in one of our next "Bulletin Numismatique" to present your discovery, and so we will ask if somebody else have a similar coin ? I wish you a nice day. Best Regards" A speedy and honest response!!! If only Spink were as accomodating

Of course a completionist is never happy with the grades of all dates, so I've been looking to upgrade my 1853 MA 10 centimes Another difficult one with a mintage of just 1,009,338, and I came accross this one for €20 on Ebay a reasonable price but no improvement on grade, until I noticed the Marseillles mintmaster's mark of a scallop shell is inverted - an unrecorded variety cont below ...

True, Scandinavian levels of social services can never be funded by U.S. levels of taxation. We all have to compromise as to where we want the balance point to be.