davidrj

That 1863 looks interesting Scott, can you post a bigger picture of the date please?

The golden rule for all auctions, decide your highest bid and stick to it - virtually everything I buy on Ebay is via a snipe David

There's the 1922 with unlisted reverse (similar to 1927) & the dot in trident on normal reverse, then there are the various "helmet stalks" and "tidal waves" on Liz pennies

and 1582-1608 Lorraine Nancy Sol Carolus

A couple of new arrivals 1213-1276 Aragon James I Dinero 1530-40 France Denier Tournois Francois I

Guilty as charged! I started by searching 5/- bags of copper from the bank, my limited funds at the time meant any silver was spent, only pennies were saved Liverpool in the 60's was still a major port, so foreign coins were common in circulation, pennies from Ireland, Australia, S.Africa etc - even Argentinian 2cvos! So my interests widened to other 30mm bronze pennies such French 10 centimes, and others worldwide Now getting tired of chasing missing dates and better grades, so going much further back on French copper, and dabbling in medieval European deniers when I see a nice design at a decent price Nowadays I just buy what takes my fancy - still like my bronze pennies though, some are still those pulled from circulation 50 yrs ago, finding a worn 1869 was a triumph!!.... paying a fortune for a higher grade would not be the same. .

You are looking at two different reverse dies F.158 Rev. b E of PENNY to gap (Scarcer type) F.159 Rev. c E of PENNY to tooth David

They look far more like real people, compared to most stylised royal portraits

Super portraits on that Saxony coin

This maybe that once in a lifetime opportunity to get a 1954 penny David

OK, I know it's not milled, and I know it's not bronze or copper but....................... .............sometimes a coin just takes your fancy - this little billon penny just appealed for the bizarre beady eyed portrait - plus a decent grade on a nice full flan, and a legend even I could read JACOBUS REX, ARAGON seller's pictures It's a denier of James I of Aragon 1213-1276 - Wiki entry I honestly didn't expect to win this, but I got it for the opening bid of €20 so £20 with postage PS who here remembers Marty Feldman?? David

The last Scottish king of this name was Alexander III. He was the last king of the House of Dunkeld and reigned from 1249 to 1286, and was, surprise, surprise the son of Alexander II. So, Mr Salmond would become Alexander IV - sounds better than King Salmond I, with Queen Sturgeon alongside him. Is there a living Stuart claimant to a Scottish throne?

I did once spend 4 Churchill crowns, well what else would you do with them?

Interesting article on a standardised rarity scale here Though its extension to "16,000,000 known" seems way OTT even for collectors of US coins David

link

definite overdate for me, 7 looks rentered too

So much for a new design to beat the forgers

Very French, and nice David

I stole the timeline from Wikipedia My first computing experience was was with CP/M (anyone remember that - Digital research) using a Z80 card in an Apple ][, we had a massive brute of a hard disk with the amazing capacity of 5MB! Later we migrated to DOS and then Santa Cruz Xenix - using a Tandon AT with a 100MB disk (this hardware cost £2000 in 1986) My favourite operating system has to be RiscOS running on an Acorn Archimedes, though Amiga Dos was interesting So yes Bob, I am that old, and I haven't written a line of code for over 20 years now,so everything getting a bit rusty David

Yes, it was ME that was the awful one (the last one running under MSDOS) Though XP had a DOS emulator There are an awful lot of companies still using DOS based software under XP - a problem now Microsoft have stopped supporting XP Windoze 8 is still based on the NT core (NT6.3)

I had a laptop with ME on - total crap, both my desktop & laptop run 7 - very happy with that I remember buying a computer for work around about 2001 which had the very brief successor to W98, can't remember what it was called, but it was the worst OS Microsoft ever produced. And I've used them all from DOS3 to 6, Windows2 I used Xenix (an early UNIX clone for PCs) back in the late 80's much better, does any one have any experience of the current Linux type versions? I've chickened out of trying as I'm not sure I would get my favourite DTP (Serif Pageplus) to work under emulation mode David

spotted this on Ebay "Coin - Stamp Camera - Photograph & Catalog with Coin & Stamp Databases Included"

This looks a useful gadget Lighthouse Phonescope Precision Magnifier For Smartphones David

Interesting article in today's Independent Dutch counterfeiting ring's £30m swindle behind decision to replace £1 coinDavid

Yes it used to be bleak, but Burnley is now on the up http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-23849081