Nick

I've no idea about the accuracy of the figures, but 1887 and 1893 come from the era of the Royal Mint Annual Report, which contain sections written by the head of each department. The reports from the die department contain the number of pieces coined and the number of dies used (obverse and reverse). As an example: in the production of just 54,864 gold £5 pieces in 1887, a whopping 429 obverse and 248 reverse dies were consumed. That's just under 128 coins per obverse die - probably less than a minute of run-time for the press.

Everybody else does too, but you can only see your own warning points.

[rant] Bl00dy useless auction site - you can't see the reverse without being diverted to the egregious Photobucket site. As for a grade of GVF, who are they trying to kid?? [/rant] But it's clearly one of the forgeries you found, and I reckon you did the right thing, contacting the auctioneers. As for other sales, all we can do is sit here saying over and over : "Buyers Beware!!" and hope that people see us. Not quite right, Peck. The only reason you are directed to the PhotoBucket site, is because that is where TG hosted his screenshot. The original webpage is here and, in my opinion, saleroom.com is one of the best auction sites out there.

There are some cracking coins coming up in DNW's June auction: high grade halfcrowns (including 1841, 1903 and 1905), Gothic florins (including 1863 in better than EF) and many other desirable items. Shame I'm 'boracic', or I could have had a go at quite a few of them...

There is an even better 1863 florin coming up for auction at DNW in September. I wouldn't be suprised if this one goes for well in excess of £5k.

I would say not proof too. As DaveG says, the edges don't look sharp enough. Also, the halfcrown is a type 1 obverse thus making a proof very unlikely.

How did you do that? I wanted to copy the pop-up to save typing, but haven't a clue how to do it. Why are computers so difficult? Alt-PrintScreen I suspect, then paste into a picture editor to save as jpeg.

I can't.

Thanks. More than one identifier always helps in the case of non-Heritage sized pictures.

Is this the ii over i variety or not? Even though the second i looks to be a slightly different size to the first and is doubled, I thought that the ii over i variety showed remnants of the original full stop under the second i.

All of the images of 1852 ii/i I've found so far have two small raised bumps just to the left of the top of the d in d:g:. Is your's the same VS?

A lovely florin, good strike too. You can just see part of the dot on the inner curve of the second i. I've looked at quite a few of these early florins and it seems possible that the last few 'digits' of the roman date (after mdccc) were added manually. Therefore, I suspect that the ii. over i. is just correcting a mistake in 1852 rather than using an 1851 die, which were all proofs as far as I'm aware.

I've re-calibrated, re-counted, re-synched the whole forum and have removed the server stored cache files and theoretically it should be fine now! At least, there should certainly be no more disappearing threads, but as for the confusion in the browser bar between predecimal.com/forum and british-coins.com/forum I'm still personally experiencing problems with that. Anyone else having similar issues? This could cause people to become logged out. For the last two or three days (for me) it has been consistently predecimal.com, and there haven't been any problems. ditto

The eBay fees (for non-business listings) come in 3 categories: insertion fees, final value fees and feature fees. Insertion fees can be zero (depending on the starting price, or a free listing weekend) Final value fees are 10% of the selling price (capped at £75) Feature fees are listing upgrades (eg larger pictures etc) This page should allow you to work out what fees were applicable to your sales. PS. ...and don't forget the PayPal fees if any of your buyers paid by that method.

...and most of yesterday's posts have vanished. Yes, mine have disappeared! Mine too - though I only realised when I saw that Dave's YEEHAAAAAAAA was only 3 posts up from the bottom. But I also note that the site name has reverted back to www.predecimal.com from www.british-coins.com - perhaps that is something to do with why yesterday's posts have disappeared? Sounds like the most likely explanation.

Whilst there is little doubt that it could be sold on for a profit, the chances of it being kosher are very slim.

...and most of yesterday's posts have vanished.

Just when you thought the Forum was working again... or did I just dream that people were posting yesterday.

It's not just you. The site has been down for 48 hours here. I spoke to Chris yesterday and he knew about the problems and was working on it. I'm glad it's back (after a fashion). You only realise how much you use it once it's not there!

I don't see anything that doesn't look right. It's a scarcer than normal variety (3B) that looks to be about EF with the reverse better. The toning looks like it might be fairly dark, which might put some off, but other than that seems ok.

Bull is short for bullion and means that the coin has no numismatic value, but has a value based on the metal constituents (eg silver content).

There's got to be a chance, I suppose? There would be space for the stop to be entirely hidden under that i, and there could've been more than one die re-used this way. However, I wouldn't buy it as one, though, as I'd definitely want a 'peeping stop' die-variety to substantiate the claim. There must be endless varieties out there, which are now impossible to 100% confirm, it's only in cases such as your suggested part showing stop, that you can name it. Unless other die features clearly link it to a li obverse.... Without a long-winded post, I think you know where I'm coming from. Basically, without other die identifiers, I don't see how he, or anyone else, could ever call it ii/i He can call it what he likes and that is the rub. Listings on ebay are full of spurious claims, and the higher the catalogue value the more frequently they are encountered. I too would like a little corroborative evidence in the form of an identifiably identical 1851 die to say for certain. And if he'd spent the last couple of weeks pulling that kind of truly verifiable evidence together, he sure as hell wouldn't be leaving it to rot on his hard-drive! It would've been proudly copied and pasted into a very grand description on eBay! I see that London Coins have previously sold a few ii/i varieties and on each one part of the stop is still visible, so I think I'll give this one a miss.

Looks like you are throwing up after consuming one of those horrible blue designer drinks. Serves you right. Agreed. This one is better:

Lacking a drool emoticon. Hope this one works.

Some nice looking Gothic crowns there, but definitely on the steep side of price. It always amazes me that for a mintage of only 8,000, every sale seems to have a few on offer. BTW. I can't tell how many pictures of 1847 Gothic crowns I've looked at in the past, but it must be in the hundreds; today is the first time I've spotted the WW on the reverse.