Nick

Given that they can't even spell licence correctly for the UK, I suspect their products would be about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.

With three different obverses and two reverses; there are a few variants of 1889 threepence, of which some are scarcer than others.

Is the Spanish Riding School not in Vienna?

Being a country bumpkin, I have a regular postie who has become a friend. I am quite happy for him to sign for my packages as a) I trust him and it saves me the 3 mile drive the following day to get it from the sorting office. Where did that bloody smiley come from? The emoticons are simply graphical replacements for sequences of text that look vaguely like smiley faces. Unfortunately, if you actually wanted to use a b followed by a closing round bracket - you can't. Most systems that use emoticons have a way to disable an emoticon (eg using a backslash to make the characters literal) but I haven't found one that works here. b ) Yeah, a space sort of works, but any programmer worth their salt would provide a mechanism to override an otherwise default behaviour.

Being a country bumpkin, I have a regular postie who has become a friend. I am quite happy for him to sign for my packages as a) I trust him and it saves me the 3 mile drive the following day to get it from the sorting office. Where did that bloody smiley come from? The emoticons are simply graphical replacements for sequences of text that look vaguely like smiley faces. Unfortunately, if you actually wanted to use a b followed by a closing round bracket - you can't. Most systems that use emoticons have a way to disable an emoticon (eg using a backslash to make the characters literal) but I haven't found one that works here.

So is this just a normal coin then? Yes, not silver, but silver colour .. A 5p dated 2010 is made from cupro-nickel, which can tarnish to a coppery colour, although it is normally streaky. A picture would probably help if you can get one... Ok taken a couple of pics.. hope they are clear enough :)I can see now on the picture how uneven the tarnish is.. That doesn't look like normal toning. It looks as if somebody has attempted to plate it with another metal/substance.

I wish somebody would buy me 'unwanted' gifts like that.

So is this just a normal coin then? Yes, not silver, but silver colour .. A 5p dated 2010 is made from cupro-nickel, which can tarnish to a coppery colour, although it is normally streaky. A picture would probably help if you can get one...

The when is not relevant, it's the maximum amount that counts. Most people bid near the end to prevent an early high bid from being shilled, but a large enough bid in the first second will still win if it's greater than everbody else's maximum.

Whatever method you use and however late you bid, you've still got to beat the highest bid amount.

Just so PCGS doesn't feel left out, here's an example of their incompetence.

I like the typo in the description. "balzing" is definitely a good way of describing that monstrosity.

Like Vicky, I also believe that TPGs do take into account on the position of the marks. The PCGS website give the following defintition for MS65 "Minor marks/hairlines though none in focal areas, above average strike". By "focal" areas, I assume they mean the face or an important part of the design on the reverse. I think they must do. But surely they should not. The position of a contact mark can affect desirability and hence value but should not affect the grade.

I don't think anybody's opinion will have changed. It's either a crude forgery, or some sort of 'fantasy' piece. Your only hope would be that there is some gold content.

OT and PT are 'ornamental trident' prongs and 'plain trident' prongs. Proof means a coin specially struck with polished dies and blanks and FDC, usually only used with proofs, standing for fleur-de-coin which essentially means the same as 'as struck' or as it left the mint.

That's another worry,you think they are slabbed correctly,turns out the slab is faked so the content is also worthless,or worst scenario,the slab is correct,and it's a third party grader that's wrongly slabbed a fake.I think with the internet,more and more people will start to rely on a slabbed coin for authenticity. If you can prove that they have slabbed a fake, the more respectable TPGs like PCGS, NGC or CGS will compensate you to the market value of the real coin. For NGC or CGS, you can use the number on the slab on their databases and get a photo of the coin originally slabbed. This should tell you if you have got a fake coin in a fake slab. NGC only takes pictures of the coins that have paid the extra fee for pictures. Almost half or more don't have pictures. I think CGS takes pic's of all coins. (I think). They have had pic's of all of the coins I have followed up on at least! If you are referring to CGS UK, I believe that they do now always take pictures, but have not always done so. There used to be a cheaper option that gave you a slab and a grade, but no photo.

Perhaps we could ask them not to bother with the identification of the variety either - just slab 'em up, please... Just a thought. I remember reading a while back that the TPGs won't guarantee that coins won't tone once inside the slab - so they obviously have done on occasions.

NGC make lots of similar errors. I have an NGC slabbed 1926 threepence which they attributed to be a 'Modified Effigy'. Fortunately, for me, it's the much scarcer 1st type.

I've not noticed any differences to the rates of wear to both sides, but I do agree with respect to bagmarks. The obverse does usually have more bagmarks than the reverse. At least that does seem to be true on the post-Victoria era coins.

Here's a picture of a slabbed sixpence. What grade number (Sheldon scale 0-70) would you give it?

I think that Coinery is suggesting that there is the square root of sod all chance of it being a genuine 1917 (half-)sovereign gold coin.

You haven't attached any pictures. To do that you need to press "Choose file", then select the file on your computer, then press "Attach this File". You'll also need to ensure that the total size for one post does not exceed 150k bytes. If you cannot reduce the sizes, you can always use an external hosting site (eg PhotoBucket) and then post a link to your files.

That one looks more like nEF. No, that's at least EF. Those 1917s ALWAYS come with weakly struck reverses (have a look at Chris's offerings - he's got a couple up there right now). That could be one reason they are so scarce in high grades - a fully struck up example would be worth a king's ransom. My grading was mostly based on the obverse, where there appears to be significant wear to the eyebrow and the top of the ear and poor definition on the beard and hair. But I wouldn't quibble over a quarter of a grade.

I covered my Brutus with Olive oil and had a pipe smoking sailor "chase me" He was trying to put a knife in my back. Oh, what was that guy's name - Duncan Somebody? Duncan Norvelle.

If you look at the thread about the 1864 florin fakes (in "Members only" section) you can make your own mind up.