DaveG38

Can I be very rude, and say that I'm overwhelmed with indifference??

That's what I call a cud!

Paddy, You have done well. Like you I'm collecting the 'maundy' issues over that period, but I still have 20 to find. Funny enough the expensive ones tend to have been fairly easy, but there are some dates I don't think I have ever seen.

Who cares about Harold or Harthcanute, when there is Alice??? Lol.

Reference your first line, you surely aren't suggesting that when somebody comes to sell their collection, this somehow makes them a dealer, rather than the collector they were?

Not only is it what is sold, but surely, whether it makes any profit or Capital Gains? Last year, I sold around £4.5k of coins on ebay, but these were all as a result of upgrades to my collection, so no business transactions. Overall, I pretty much sold them for around what I paid, so from a 'business' point of view, there was no income or gain, as such, so how can HMRC determine what constitutes a business. On a completely different area, I have just about finished clearing out a whole load of my wife's unwanted clothing - about 8 charity bags in total. Looking at ebay, I could, if I was motivated, have put them on there, and made a thousand or so, overall. That is peanuts compared to what she paid, so no profit there, but again, how can HMRC determine what has been sold, and whether it is likely to have generated a profit? Based on the above, it strikes me that HMRC will spend more time and money investigating and checking than will be gained in income to the Treasury.

So, what level of sales qualifies as 'private' and 'business,' in the minds of HMRC? Does anybody know? After all, it is quite easy to sell multiples of items, simply by clearing out cupboards etc.

Back in the day, when I worked customer service for the Post Office, I was asked to organise a Meter Check Printer on a customer's line. As I recall, this was in connection with the theft of 50 tons of newsprint! My mind boggles as to how many trucks it took to nick that load and store it. And what for? It's not like you can flog it at a boot fair!

Certainly, this purports to be one of the Lavrillier coins. What I don't get is why anybody would try and 'sell' this coin on ebay, even at the price of £86k. Given that ebay now withholds payments until the transaction is complete, they are not going to release this amount to the seller, just like that. Once it becomes clear that this is a con, it will be cancelled and the seller has failed. All I can think is that the seller, with an amazing feedback of 3, has no idea that they don't get their money immediately.

If in any doubt, avoid! It's not like these are particularly rare.

Thanks to Paddy for the information about this lot. Sadly, I won't be bidding because, unfortunately, this auctioneer does not have an in-house packing/postage service, which means any wins would be at the mercy of an external packer, and in my experience they charge at a rate that would make any wins way overpriced. Just be careful everybody.

I'm afraid that I didn't spot it. I picked up the attribution from a shilling collector on Facebook. I managed to win one 'want,' and then noticed that the 1671 plumes shilling wasn't bid on, so I snaffled it just in time. Later on, I found a couple of other varieties of Victorian shillings were not bid on, so I got those for well under the expected price. All round, I'm pretty pleased.

Not lot 13 then, which I am told had unattributed transposed shields?

Talking about LCA, is anybody on here waiting rather long for their purchases from the last auction to arrive? Usually they turn up within a day or so of payment. This time it is over a week, and no signs yet.

Am I the only one who doesn't 'get' AI? I have a book on the subject, and although it is interesting, it struck me that all AI appears to do, is analyse data etc. and act on it, faster than man can. The book talks about finding patterns in data that we might not spot, and thus unexpected solutions to problems, but again it strikes me this is a matter of speed, rather than 'intelligence.' Given enough people and time it seems to me that anything AI can do we too could, albeit much slower. For me, this doesn't make AI intelligent, just fast. The other aspect I don't understand is the issue of AI 'learning' based on 'reading' existing documentation, so that it can absorb huge amounts of information and can use this in any tasks it is undertaking. How does it sort the wheat from the chaff? How does it work out how the rantings of Donald Trump compare to the utterings of any other US president, or how it can differentiate the absolute rubbish put out by some people online, compared to those who actually have a sensible argument? In short, how does it sort the truth from the lies? Plus, of course, how does it learn morality, when in literature there are fine lines which are often blurred. In short, how can we ensure that AI doesn't decide that the problems of the world are caused by man, and decides to do away with us? After all, this would likely solve the problem of climate change, which it will have learned is a major issue at the moment!!