DaveG38

The following line underneath the description of the last item tells you all you need to know about this seller and his 'finds': Any rude insulting messages will not be tolerated or answered, but will be reported to eBay. Clearly, he gets plenty of 'advice' about the validity of his items for sale and doesn't take kindly to his 'honesty' being questioned.

Curious.It looks a little like the coin has been struck very hard by another edge on, and the edge milling has resulted in an imprint of the milling in the field.

Another iffy looking coin? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1787-George-III-Silver-Shilling/232657829890?hash=item362b7cc002:g:5LQAAOSw8W5aeyNK

I can safely say that all of my purchases are happliy sitting in my collection and won't be for sale any time soon (God willing).

I don't think I'll try it on my coin, which is a 1725 WCC shilling in GVF. A very nice coin apart from the loop soldered to it.

Whilst I agree with the principle of simply selling them on, I am tempted to ask whether anybody has a decent method of chemically removing solder, obviously without damaging the coins. It must be possible as the restoration guy in the US clearly manges to do so (though maybe mechanically). I'm a chemist by education, but I'm struggling to see a method of doing so. Any ideas?

Excellent portrait of Edward.

Regarding the 1695 DEI GRATIA halfpenny, its deliberate exclusion by Mr Skingley is completely perverse for several reasons. Firstly, Spink themselves sold one back in 2001(?) ish, so it isn't as if they have never handled one and could disclaim any knowledge of it. From this they ought to be able to come up with a rough price based on what their one sold for and allowing for the intervening period. Secondly, it isn't a minor variety as he claimed, and by implication not worthy of inclusion, along the lines of many of the bun pennies or the 'dot' pennies which they do include. It has a different obverse legend and one which is clearly the first issue of Wiliam III. That's a major variety in anybody's book. It's also not unique - there are 5 known examples, and likely more, so in this respect it is more worthy than the 1825 gold farthing and should be in every catalogue. I guess one of the problems may be that neither the Royal Mint nor the BM have an example (as far as I know) and this may delegitimise the coins as far as Spink are concerned.

All I will say is that the general thrust of this article is about right. No, they don't have a grasp of the detailed prices/values, but they have reasonably accurately identified the main 'rare' coins in circulation. The prices they quote for them are mostly off, particularly the undated 20p which is nowhere near £100 now, but was in the early days. But as has been said, it is the Daily Mail, so what do you expect, though I'm not sure the working man's beano (The Sun) or the Mirrror would have got it any better. However, I somehow, I doubt that this guy is making quite the sort of money claimed, though there is, it seems, a healthy market for modern 'rarities' and he's just tapping into this. He's got stiff competition from other 'dealers' who also sell these coins and although the mark up is considerable it takes a hell of a lot of sales to 'make' £70k a year in sales, let alone profits. Having said this, I notice that there are many people selling Isaac Newton 50ps, yet these don't seem to be available in change yet, which suggest that people are bulk ordering them from banks and then selling them on at a profit to those who aren't willing to wait for one in change. Maybe he's one of these people. Maybe, one day, he'll branch out into predecimal and become another general coin dealer. Who knows? The only other thing is that I'd hate to have to rely on the Post Office he uses, assuming he uses the local counter. I've been at the front, with just a dozen RD or SD coins to be processed/posted and the thudding of daggers in my back from all those standing fuming in the queue is quite uncomfortable.

True. Early in December, I withdrew £100 in cash from a cash machine, and here we are on 8 January, and I've still got £60 of it in my wallet. Pretty much all my spend has been online or for really small stuff.

Apart from the obvious new pound coins, I haven't seen a single 'normal' circulation coin of 2017 at all, which is unusual given that we are now in 2018.

It certainly has the look of a fake.

The only song for gold coin collectors. Or if you prefer the original: Fabulous piece written by Ennio Morricone.

Picked up a nice 1/3 Guinea which was an OK price with the discount.

They both look like post-Mint damage to me.

I guess he'll end up buying his own coin.

Perhaps he's one of those shape-shifting lizards that David Icke is so fond of!!!

Does Trump know any 'real humanss'?

There's nothing cute about a blank page!!

No need to go in person, just go on the Royal Mail website and go to the 'get a price' section.

Have they buried their stubborness and acknowledged the 1695 DEI GRATIA halfpenny yet?

How long is a 'few'? So far I've waited 35 minutes with nothing coming down, plus my processor has shot up to close on 100% usage, and physical memory is also close to the max. Summat isn't right.

I can't download it.

Many thanks for this everyone. I'm happy with that attribution.

Just spent several fruitless hours going through auction sites and other websites trying to identify the moneyer for my Edward the Confessor penny. Can anyone help? The coin is the facing type (S 1183) and the inscription on the reverse appears to be something like 'AEDGA? On LU??. Clearly the mint is London and I'm assuming that the moneyer is probably AEDGAR. The only problem is that I can't find any reference to a moneyer named Aedgar from the online sources I've looked at. Anyone got a reference or can confirm my guess?