choolie

I should say genuine good quality historic coins are a good hedge against inflation notwithstanding investment bubbles that may occur. Okay smart asses

It is also worth noting that older coins in the higher grades will always be desired by colectors, they are only likely to become rarer as time goes on and will hold and increase in value and can make a very good investment.

Yes but £5 was worth a lot more back then. At Least coins are inflation proof.

Ah the rolls royce of coin autions. Thanks

Out of interest, what was the auction from which this topic began?

lol Descartes, good name.

Try going to some auctions. They always seem to have a few bulk lots. You can also look at the coins without having to buy them.

I am still here; just look occasionaly. Don't really post.

Hello I got into coins from buying bullion gold sovereigns and silver coins, I now think gold is too expensive. I then bought roman coins and some hammered because I like a bit of history. I then decided on crowns and shillings mostly milled from fairly recent history. I then found I was sticking to shillings. My view was to collect all the different dates, I am finding I am ammassing a collection of coins which are much the same (from different dates) so that is one problem with this method. Another is that There always comes up a rare date which means the coin will cost ten times as much as the others. I have ammassed a collection of shillings, but now I think my favourites 17th and 18th century milled coins. so once again I think i may change my style and just concentrate on that period. I also thought it would be useful to do something like collecting with my demented obsessive streak I would be interested to hear from all collectors what structure you base your coin collections around. dates, reigns or however and what led you to this method. What you say >><<

I'm still trying to raise some funds for my purchases. I have been trying to offload a few items at my local auction house. I am not sure whether it would be better to try and sell them on e-bay. I gave them a few books and a bit of old jewellry and they said I might get about £100 hammer price for it all. E-bay seems a good place for postable general items, I tend to think that higher quality items should do better at auction, but does a provincial auction house get a wide enough customer base to secure a good price?

So how on earth does someone like that get 100% positive feedback?

LOL

Howdy, I am not sure this is the right area for it but I have a few questions. I have some bullion silver coins which I bought about a year ago 12 of them they are 1 ounce Austrian .999 silver philharmonic coins, I now realize that they are very common and uninteresting and I would much rather sell them and use the money to buy a nice interesting coin. I can sell them back to coininvest at around £12each but I was thinking i might do a bit better by listing them as a job lot e-bay I am a was wondering if I can trust the natural arbitrage of e-bay to get around the spot silver price if I start at 99p. And I was starting to worry if there are VAT issues oranything else I need to worry about if i start dealing bullion in this manner.

Thanks Guys. Ha ha, I just secured £12.44 per coin from coin invest I am have actually made a profit of £10. Not bad eh? should cover the postage anyay.

Really I never knew that.

There is an article in this weeks "investors Chronicle" about sovereign investing. There wasn't much of interest in it but they did point out a useful site which I didn[t know about concerning counterfeit coins. coin authentication

I take it that these are a rare date for these coins?

HI azda I can't see where anybody has said what the difference is between the slabbing companies. I think there are pros and cons to slabbing which have been mentioned. But if slabbing is reversible then it,s fine. And if your coin suddenly becomes worth twice as much then who wouldn't. Plastic does not age well so In a few years everybody may go off it, I have never actually seen a slabbed coin in hand. By the way

There was an interesting article in coin news about slabbing, which made me start thinking that maybe slabbing could be a good thing. The article was stating how strict and accurate CGS were with their grading. Can anyone say anything about the difference between the slabbing companies? Which ones they use? and why

Yes I did think that the conversation in eBay laughs was meriting its own topic. Any information references, advice on where to buy/avoid or book suggestions on counterfeits would be appreciated.

Yes that is truly shocking!

Weight, surface detail, multiple examples with identical marks, incorrect die axis, edge quality, counterfeit references (of which there are many but people can't be bothered to read), quality of strike, sharpness of detail. Thanks rob, well there are at least a few things to go on there.

Peckris are you out there? it's been quiet for a few days on the forum. I was just wondering if you would includ Bonhams in your list of Auction houses that are ok? they have a sale coming up soon. I was also wondering if anyone knows if there are means to test whether a coin is fake or not? Weighing and measuring to start with, sure. But is it even possible to tell beyond this?

Hi any info would be gratefully received, one of my early clueless e-bay purchases. I think it was labelled "medieval hammered coin, possibly northern europe" and that was as much as the seller said.

It's your decision - you might indeed be taking a wise course of action. The only way to detect good forgeries is to find another collector with an identical coin - it's the reproduction of the minute imperfections of one original coin used as a 'master copy' that is the tell-tale. In which case, eBay might be the best place to sell on. As to the future, avoid eBay, avoid China, avoid auctions - find yourself one trustworthy dealer and rely on him/her as a source of supply. Hi peck, I am interested in why you say avoid auctions, surely the coin specialist auction houses should be pretty reliable? This is indeed a worrying issue I guess you can weigh and measure coins but if the fakes are done well enough it would be impossible to tell. Coins by their nature should be difficult to forge but if the Chinese authorities are going to allow the 'replica' factories to exist then we are in trouble.