Nick

I'm sure you've told us before Dave, but how do you see the identities of 'private bidders'? Also, I can never quite understand things like this : £222 29-May-13 17:22:23 BST £25 29-May-13 18:27:39 BST How does a later bid of £25 even register, when an earlier bid jumped it up to £222 ? Because the earlier bid of £222.22 only had to beat a bid of £7.77, so was winning at £8.27. Then another bid came in at £25.88, which was immediately beaten by the £222.22 bid, which was then winning at £26.88.

His greed is only exceeded by his stupidity. But then again, he is obviously confident that eBay won't see anything suspicious, nor will they see a business being run through an individual's account.

Pray tell, I have a fake 1905 half crown and wish I knew what points it out as a fake. From what I gleaned on this very forum, there's a small break in the R of EDWARDVS that is the prime giveaway on many of them. But there may be other flaws on those from other sources? Are you certain that this only appears on fakes? I have seen more 1905 halfcrowns with the defect on the R of EDWARDVS, than without. The EF example in the Andrew Scothern collection (being auctioned by DNW later this month) also has the defect. The only giveaway of fakes that I'm aware of is the wonky I of QVI on the reverse.

I know that standards are slipping at the Royal Mint, but I don't think they would produce one quite so shoddy. Given that somewhere up to 5% of all one pound coins are fake, it's fair to assume that you have yourself a fake. 5 percent wow!! thanks The fact the planchet has different thickness or is tapered could that change the weight or explain it being over weight? Also the planchet if it wasnt rolled out correctly surely the result would be something like this? For example the extra weight comes from the thickness, The lack of detail and weak strike on the reverse could be becuase the round didnt sit square when it was struck etc etc Or its part of that 5 % So its effectively illegal to spend counterfeit money?? Planchets are normally stamped out from a sheet of rolled alloy, which is wide enough for several blanks across that width. Given the variation of planchet thickness you have within a single blank, the rolled sheet would have to be mm thin at one side and a few cm thick at the other. I'm pretty sure that the Royal Mint machinery is not even capable of producing such a sheet. It is illegal to spend counterfeit money, as it is fraud, although proving intent in the case of a single £1 coin would be difficult.

I have no knowledge of Jersey coinage, but the coin pictured is definitely the result of a cracked die. It is pretty common for die cracks to roughly follow the baseline of the legend as this one does through "ELFT".

I know that standards are slipping at the Royal Mint, but I don't think they would produce one quite so shoddy. Given that somewhere up to 5% of all one pound coins are fake, it's fair to assume that you have yourself a fake.

With a bullshit story to go with it.

Right, just checked it. Says 7.96g. Soooo.... is that still ok? The weight range quoted is the legal range to allow it to be issued by the mint. Allowing for a little wear since 1879, the weight would seem to be ok. Die axis rotation was discussed in a different thread fairly recently. From the research I did for that thread, a 20 degree rotation from the norm is not particularly unusual (at least not for shillings).

Get yourself a tripod, or decrease the shutter time. Both of these help to reduce the effects of camera shake. You can easily reduce the shutter time by using A or P mode (Aperture priority or Programmed Auto) and then choose a small F-stop number (ie large aperture => short exposure time).

You still can. It's 18% grey that is the 'standard' shade for accurate WB calculation. You could try turning the auto WB off (if the camera allows) and setting it to the 'right' value for the type of coin you're shooting, using a mid-grey background. Even better if you could save that setting for future use. If you are using the same light source, the WB setting should be the same regardless of whether you are shooting bronze or silver.

You still can. It's 18% grey that is the 'standard' shade for accurate WB calculation.

Pictures speak a thousand words! Bring it on Peter....... I've got a major task it setting up a system for good photography (better than ebay quality) I have bought cameras and LED lights...now practice In my experience, you'll want to keep LED lights as far away from coins as you can manage. Most decent cameras will make use of even a small amount of light, as long as it exceeds the minimum required - the only issue is white-balance. In this respect, I have found that low-power Compact Fluorescent bulbs make an almost ideal light source.

The legal weight range for an 1879 sovereign is 7.975-8.001 grams.

Really? Blimey, I look forward to that! Peter's being saying that for a while now. I'm not aware that Rob has ever confirmed or denied it.

Didn't they? That's interesting. So 9 would be VIIII then ? I didn't know that either, when did it come in, anyone know? William IV is IIII on his coins .... According to Wikipedia: "Subtractive notation was rarely used in Ancient Rome but became popular in the 13th century." Yes, the Middle Ages was the period I had down. Though IIII was certainly IV when clocks became popular from the 17thC - so why clock makers preferred IIII is anyone's guess. There are a number of suggestions here as to why clockmakers may have preferred IIII.

Not knowing any German, I used Google translate: "Oh this popo bludgers can slip me the hump down. I will sobalt the supervisor come in contact with a morning dawns. I have enough to prove the guy probably pictureSurfaceArea of the sweep (hopefully). This is unheard of for years, the unsuspecting collectors cheated by a bunch of money. Who knows how many accounts has ...... Very clever lad sold here and there to its periodically fakes are not endeckt to elegantly on different accounts. Well looks like as if he has made ​​a few errors. We'll see ..." Particularly like the first line! No idea what it was supposed to translate as.

Didn't they? That's interesting. So 9 would be VIIII then ? I didn't know that either, when did it come in, anyone know? William IV is IIII on his coins .... According to Wikipedia: "Subtractive notation was rarely used in Ancient Rome but became popular in the 13th century."

Looks like a die break to me. Sorry, no premium on this one. It would have to be extremely rare for any collector to live with the hole.

The images have also been doctored to blur away the surface marks. Mind you, anything can happen after a good plow (whatever that might be).

Definitely looks like 70 to me and the 7 is positioned in the same place as the die number 71 that I have.

I suspect that there have been many cases where the proof coins were replaced with the contents of the 'plastic' set. If it's not obvious that the coins are circulation standard, then look at the obverse types. The 'plastic' coins will be obverse 1 and the proof coins will be obverse 2.

My examination of the die axis variation for Victorian young-head shillings is complete. I utilised a square piece of thick card with a shilling-sized hole that allows the reverse to be aligned with a mark on the card and then flipped over and the obverse photographed, whilst maintaining the reverse in the correct alignment. I arbitrarily chose as a zero point an obverse that looked to have the portrait in the most normally upright position, then measured each of the angular differences from this zero point. The results from 65 YH shillings show a spread of 33 degrees, from 27 degrees clockwise to 6 degrees anti-clockwise. The results are normally distributed about the mean (8 degrees clockwise). Apologies for posting a topic that may only be of interest to Rob and maybe he was just being polite.

Thanks Rob. Here is a histogram of the results.

I don't know how I've managed to get 'Price: highest first' by default in Chrome, but I'm quite glad that I have. That and 'newly listed' are the options I use most. BTW Stuart your PM box is full.

They do it to try and make sure that their listing appears first in the list because the default sort criterion is price. Are you sure? If I don't set anything, the default they select is "Soonest ending" Yes. If I type eg "1965 sixpence" into the "Search..." field at the top of the "My eBay" page - it returns a list of items sorted by "Price:highest first" How odd, I always get 'Best Match'! Just tried the same in different browsers: in Firefox I get Best Match; in Chrome I get Price:highest first. Weird.