Accumulator

Hi Rich, I wouldn't disagree with Paulus. I would say, though, that proper evaluation of the half crown would require a higher resolution photo. When grading above GVF, detail is everything (lion's faces etc.) and that just isn't discernible from the picture. Regarding the cartwheels, Spink is a little optimistic on pricing. At any given time there are a large number on the market and just about every dealer has at least a couple, with eBay regularly listing dozens (in varying grade, of course). £200 is probably top whack for anything less than EF. Coins that are genuine EF to GEF will be around the Spink price you quote, with A/UNC examples £600+, and true UNC around £1,000. The discrepancy you mention is probably entirely down to grading stretch. As Paulus says, we really need a photo.

Or there's Britannia on the 'throne':

Another example of the wardrobe malfunction posted by Peck. A bit less flat-chested than Rob's!

Excellent, Rob. That'll take some beating!

I think that's a really good summary of their relative scarcity. Here's my take, which is similar: 1912H - Really quite common, even in GEF+, and generally well struck up. I see plenty for sale, even on eBay 1918H - Just about all the examples I've seen have the 'mushy' reverse. I've also been told of the hoard that was found in the 80's and gradually dripped into the market. I bought the recent Spink New York example (it wasn't expensive) and am hoping it's slightly better than the norm. At the moment I only have fairly poor photos so will have to wait and see! 1919H - As you say, much less common in good grade than the 1918H's. Much better struck up too. I hadn't noticed the allow problem that plagues the KN's on this coin, but I haven't looked at too many. 1918KN - Well struck and some nice coins around, but never cheap in top grade 1919KN - With these I've frequently noticed the reddish alloy (at least I presume it's the alloy). Again generally well struck nd always commanding the highest prices. £2,500+ for a true BU example, close to prices for the 1926ME. Here's an example of the reddish alloy:

I think this is just about the best piece of advice offered, unless you truly do have endless funds to purchase coins!I wonder how much pleasure there would be in it all if the penny pinch didn't hurt just a tiny little bit? I compare it to buying a classic car on a budget, and struggling to finance the restoration on weekends and evenings! Who would enjoy his classic the most, the man who finally drives his little Triumph GT6 out of the garage for a test drive, or the wealthy merchant or pop star who walks into a London classic car showroom, points, and says 'that one'? Never having quite enough isn't always such a bad thing in the pleasure stakes, there's definitely a relationship! I totally agree, Stuart, not that any of us have lived the unlimited funds dream to compare! A good example for me was the recent Spink New York sale of pennies. There were 20+ coins which, with unlimited budget, I would have bought. In the end I won two, which I feel is about right. If I could afford and bought all 20 then I think collecting would quickly become boring. On the other hand, if I watched all the wanted coins pass without being able to make a single purchase I might feel slightly dejected. For most of us dejection is going to be a more frequent emotion than boredom, but a happy medium is best of all!

There's no real harm in gaining confidence with some lower end pieces, but you can guarantee your aspirations will increase over time. As long as you haven't spent too much, taking a small hit later if you upgrade will be worth the lessons learnt. If you're keen to build a date run then start with the cheaper dates, looking for the best you can find. Once in a while you will come across a rarer coin and know it's the one you want. By then you should have the confidence to be make the larger investment. It's been said many times before, but think of coin collecting as a marathon, not a sprint!

Hurry, hurry…. 105 sold, only one left! I wonder how much the trays are?

Always a shame to see such examples holed I'm struggling to tell whether the Verdi-Care has done anything more than darken the green deposits on the obverse to black. Certainly it's darkened patches on the reverse, particularly around the trident. It reminds me slightly of the old Trustan 2000 (?) liquid used to treat rust on cars. As far as I could tell it just turned the top layer of rust black, but possibly it did stop it getting any worse. Scraping away the top surface just revealed the rust to still be there underneath the coating! I have a couple of coins which are in EF condition but so stained and patchy their eye appeal is zero. I've often wondered about taking them back to raw metal and letting them re-tone naturally over years.

LOL, yes it's got great appeal brg, is there an edge legend with it? Nope, no edge lettering. These are "small-cent" size, so only 19mm diameter, and quite thin. Much smaller than the halfpence and pennies of the "Conder" era. Excellent photos through the slab. I do find it difficult to avoid some reflection.

Lovely example Bob. Not having Facebook (and having no real intention to), I don't have access to the page so I'll no doubt miss out on a few good opportunities like that!

As all the regulars will know, I have my penny collection displayed on-line. This is mainly for my benefit as it allows me to browse and check coins (in much magnified form) at will, wherever I am. It particularly helps with viewing coins that are stored off-site. When I created the website, I followed the layout of Freeman with all currency issues and their corresponding proofs displayed together and all patterns and other oddities in separate 'trays' at the end. However, I recently acquired the catalogue for Spink's sale of the Colin Adams collection in 2003 (from Rob) and noted a different layout, which I quite like. Here, all the patterns, trials, mis-strikes and other oddities are included chronologically with the currency and proof coins. I presume that this was how Colin viewed his collection? The effect is to provide more of an in-context history of the penny, through all its developments. Before possibly moving things around, I wondered how others tackle this in their own collections? Do you entirely separate patterns or do you go for a more cohesive approach?

Undated patterns also cause a bit of grief in their placement, not to mention unconventional denominations such as the Victorian RM pieces where you have 1, 2, 5 & 10 centimes, cents, 1 centum, 5 farthings, 100 mils, one decade, 1/20th shilling, ducat, undated, undenominated etc pieces. The same also goes for the rather unhelpful 4 pence halfpenny and two pence farthing Ed. VI countermarked pieces and what about the revalued silver and gold? Do you keep angels at 6s8d, 7s6d or 8s etc.? These cause havoc to any systematic layout. I've decided not to include any other denominations (cents etc.), so this won't be a problem. There is, however, an issue with undated coins. The Joseph Moore pennies were included at the end of the Adams sale, possibly because he didn't own an example of the rare 1844 dated coin. Since the undated varieties are often listed as from 1844, I could chronologically include all of them under this date, though it might be better to have them between the copper and bronze coins of 1860. I'm honestly not sure yet!

Interestingly, FileMaker Pro (a database manager) makes such a thing possible, though I have never ever explored how to do it. Some (many) years ago I did produce something along the lines suggested, for another project. As I recall I used MYSQL (a free SQL database provide by most hosting services) and cgi scripts to produce webpages on the fly. Like so many things, if you don't use them for a long time you do forget, but a few spare evenings spent messing about usually brings it back. Anyway, it's something which will need to wait for a less hectic time!

Welcome Rich! Not a great deal more I can add to all the good advice you've been given. If you do decide to focus on George III there are, as Peck mentions, a really broad spectrum of interesting coins you could start with. My own interest lies in the copper pennies and for these alone one could write a fairly chunky book. I agree with the advice about reading up but sometimes you just have to get a coin or two in your hands for the subject to come alive. Don't spend too much on the first few coins and, even if you later realise they were bad choices, you haven't lost much! As for storage, even for those I keep off-site, I use Lighthouse Quadrum capsules. These are 2" (5cm) square plastic holders with a range of inserts for different size coins. The capsules can be stored and displayed in purpose made trays.

Thanks guys, though, I'm no more sure which way to go than I was before. Actually, if I had the time (which I might do one day), I could provide both options. This isn't as daft as it seems. If the webpages were populated 'on the fly' by selecting from a database of all the coins, rather than hard-coded as at present, it would be just a matter of decided dynamically which coins would appear when any page was accessed. This system would also make it easy to, for example, view only the proofs, only the patterns, or even only the 'rare' coins etc. Anyway, for the moment I'll probably keep things simple and just play around with layouts when time allows.

Did you get it Peter? The price didn't increase, despite this discussion, so I presume they're not that rare?

I completely agree about not buying unless you've done some research and also that there are buyers who simply look at the slab number (which can be in your favour sometimes, when under graded coins come under the hammer). I may be wrong, but I don't think there were any reserves in the EPN sale, which would explain why nothing was left unsold! That said, everything I saw had no problem beating estimated prices (and reserves are usually about 25% below these).

Nicholas, Jaggy... Beautiful coins!

To quote Churchill, KBO Peter! If you're correct Garrett, It's amazing that farthing collectors notice a coin listed as a penny! It would never occur to me I should scan the farthings, just in case!

This is listed as a penny, but is actually a farthing. Any idea why it's attracting so much interest? I know the 1845 halfpenny is rare, but the farthings aren't. A case of mistaken identity, or am I missing something?

I think you can safely assume, even based on the responses here, that such crazy views will never gain traction.

Don't kid yourself. A group of two will have diverging views. A political party will have as many views as members, some of which you will agree with, some you won't. Although all will pay lip service to the general policies of the party, more than a few individuals will have views you find disagreeable at the least. It doesn't matter whether your views are left or right because at the extremes of both sides they are much, much closer to each other than the moderates of either persuasion. The difficulty for any smaller party is that the big 3 all have very extensive and well established mechanisms to filter out 'off message' opinions and actions, it doesn't mean they aren't there. Occasionally they appear and cause a major headache - take the Labour councilors in Liverpool in the 80s, for example. UKIP, having appeared from nowhere and, needing to appoint hundreds of unknown candidates at all levels (prospective Councilors, MEPs & MPs), are going to struggle and the fruitcakes will undoubtedly present themselves. The party should be judged more by their reaction to the nutters than by the fact that they exist. This man should be dumped immediately.

Just don't buy from Heritage, as Rob said and what i also think, they are just a marketing machine Scaring the life out of Investors and their money, everything too them is slab number orientated. Lets not forget, they send most of the RAW coins they receive to NGC and its in NGCs interest to put a nice number on the slab. Then of course we have the slab number buyers. These people are all in for a nasty shock sooner or later I can't agree with you Dave. I've been very careful (their fantastic photos help) and bought half a dozen coins through Heritage in the last year. I've been really pleased with every one of them. On one ocassion I made a mistake and actually bought the wrong coin (and also the one I really wanted). Although it was entirely my fault, they held onto the coin and placed it in the next sale for me, commission-free and I ended up with a small profit! A big business with slick marketing yes, but also great photos, lovely catalogues, top class IT and (in my limited experience) good customer service. Now tell me Spink are better?

Interesting theory! Mind you, I was already interested and looking feverishly through bank bags in the late 60s when I discovered a GVF 1909 halfpenny, an ABU 1938 halfpenny, and an EF 1935 halfpenny. I have always wondered how they got into circulation. Although they are not common, its still possible to find early (1971) 1p and 2p pieces in change in EF-UNC condition. I found several when I was looking at the portcullis designs of the 1p coins last year. Those coins would now be 42 years old, so turn the clock back to 1967 say, and that means there's a good chance of finding a EF-UNC penny or halfpenny going back to 1925. OK, 1909 is pushing it, but I can see why some nice condition coins could have been found. That's easy to explain : millions of early decimals were set aside in speculation that as the first year(s) they would someday be worth a premium; over time, as that hope has died, people would naturally offload their useless coppers into circulation. Oh I'd agree about 1971 coins. They were the commonest of the older EF-UNC coins I found, but there were still quite a number of slightly later dates, including the early 1980s. I guess some might come from coin jars being emptied out, but I still found it not so unusual to find top condition coins in change back in the £sd era. I have a door stop (a Remy Martin VSOP bottle ) filled with 1/2p's, collected in the early days of decimalisation. If they were still legal tender and the bottle broke they could easily have ended up back in circulation.