DaveG38

Here's the obverse - looks like ETC to me, but if anyone knows differently then please say, as I'm no expert on hammered at all.

Thanks Rob. I was expecting a simple confirmation and didn't think a pic would be needed. Clearly, it isn't that simple, so here's a photo. It's not the best, taken in artificial light, but hopefully it shows the necessary detail.

One method that might help, would be to put up a 'spoof' advert on eBay showing pictures of known fake coins with explanations i.e. those already being advertised, with a request not to bid on the items shown. I've seen this done before and it was helpful. Could be done from a 'new' eBay account so as to avoid compromising one's own normal username. It would be interesting to see how long it would take eBay to twig and take the auction down for that non-item.

OK, if I get to know in advance. The article(s) were submitted a couple of weeks ago, and are due to be published as two separate pieces due to their length. I'm not sure about the lead times for publication, but I'm guessing the first part won't appear until at least February, with maybe the second in March.

No, the sample was too small and the difficulty was in trying to figure out which obverse and reverse types existed as a result of different dies as opposed to consistency issues with striking 12 sided bimetallic coins. It would take a much greater sample to establish what is going on.

That's probably the generic explanation, but the size of the variation and the sheer numbers suggests its a bit more complex than that. For example, the mintage of the 1967 penny was around 600 million or so, and with the exception of a few minor varieties concerned with the drapery and the helmet, they are remarkably consistent in terms of the quality of the strike. Fast forward to 2016, when the new pound coins were produced in about the same numbers, and the consistency of the strike appears to be significantly poorer if tolerance is the only explanation for the differences. Without giving away too much concerning my article for coin news, I can say that I analysed just 40 coins dated 2016, and believe it or not, all 40 were different, which is remarkable. The differences are sufficiently clear cut that in any other series of coins they would be regarded as varieties. Indeed, in some pre-decimal coins, I would suggest that the accepted varieties show a much smaller difference than those for the new pound coin. The issue is whether these differences are explained purely by machine tolerances or whether there are genuine die varieties mixed in, plus whether striking a 12 sided coin introduced further tolerance issues, especially given the bi-metallic nature of the coin. I don't have an explanation, but I'm hoping my articles generate some interest and throw up some suggestions.

In principle, I agree with you. The problem is practicability. In the case of your maximum bid of £500 and the bidding in your favour reaches £480, the auctioneer has to call for £500 as the next bid step. If he gets a room bid he has to accept it, in which case what does he do about the commission bid? Alternatively, he could jump to an asking price of £520 in order to ensure that your £500 bid would win if nobody bids, but the problem then is what happens if nobody bids £520. The auctioneer then has to decide if he allows the original £480 bid and doesn't know if a room bidder would have bid £500, thus losing the seller £20 and his own fees, or he knocks it down at £500 and the commission bidder gets charged the extra £20, when the auctioneer doesn't know if a room bidder would have gone to £500 at all. Either way he (the auctioneer) looks dishonest and so I can understand why they tend to operate as I described earlier - it avoids most of the hassle. Also, of course, he's got a million other things to be doing at the same time as trying to sort out max bids v room bids. Basically, you win some, you lose some. In 20 years of auctions, many in the days before live bidding, I've only ever had one that went wrong with the scenario here, so I'm guessing it isn't a major problem.

It has happened to me also, and the explanation I posted is basically the one they gave me when I queried it. The problem with your suggestion is that a room bidder having bid the £500 as requested by the auctioneer would then have to be told that his bid wasn't valid as they have another on commission at the same value, which would raise some clear issues for the auctioneer. Does he give priority to the commission bidder or the room bidder? If to the commission bidder how does he explain this to the room bidder who is stood in front of him and has had a perfectly OK bid rejected? He could try forcing the room bidder up further by claiming a slightly higher commission bid than he has on the books, or by raising the level of the next bid so that it would be above that of the commission bidder e.g. to £525 in the case I described. However, in the first case the risk is that the room bidder doesn't bite. The auctioneer then has to sell to the commission bidder at his top price, but risks the wrath of the room bidder if and when he discovers this from the list of realised lots. In the second case, the auctioneer gives away the commission bidders top price. This might be acceptable, I suppose, but its all very problematic.Given that he has to make these judgments on the hoof and in a very short timescale, operating as he does and risking some occasions when things go wrong for the commission bidder is probably the simplest option. One way round this conundrum which was suggested to me by the auction house I refered to above would be to word your bids in the form £500 + 1. This signifies to the auctioneer that if there is a tie between your maximum commission bid and a room bid then you are prepared to go up one more increment. Of course you have to decide what your top bid would then be based on the increments used by the auctioneer for the price range of the item, and this only applies where there is a tie of the sort I described. I don't know if this approach is widely used by auctioneers or not. I've never tried to use it, although I am sometimes a bit nervous when I see that my maximum bid has won a lot, as I'm never quite sure, until the invoice arrives, whether I've won or not!

Ah, yes, I missed that point.

What you describe seems perfectly possible without anything underhanded. Suppose you put in a max bid of £500 as you did, and the auctioneer starts the bidding at around £200. Bidding goes in £50 increments say, and he /she finds that bidding from all sources apart from yours stops at around £400. He will then bid £450 from your 'pool' so you become the high bidder, but then another punter bids £500. At this point he has bid the same as you, but the auctioneer has got no instructions from you to go further, so your rival's bid wins even though it is the same as yours. I guess if an auctioneer worked out the possible bidding sequence, he could try to ensure that your bid would always win if it was your highest bid, but that could get quite complicated. The alternative explanation is that your rival's bid in the auction you describe was the same or higher than yours and was received earlier.

I don't have too many hammered coins, but for those I have, I've been going through them checking with the Galata Guide for attribution of the Ed I and II pennies. Mostly, so far its been fairly straightforward, but the attached one has me stumped. Its in rubbish condition (is that a new grade?) but the legends don't seem to make much sense to me. So can anyone help? All I can determine is that the reverse legend starts with DURE (for Durham I assume) and on the obverse the crown is bifoliate. The obverse legend seems to be EDW.......ANOHI...., with the A having an annulet to the left hand side.

Dave, Many thanks for this. How do you get there so quick - these pennies all look the same to me!

For further details see my upcoming articles in Coin News. Not sure when they will appear but sometime soon.

I'm not questioning what you said, but from this really poor example, how can you tell so easily?

I've been in touch with Peter Davies on several occasions about some of these and often he has said that he has now confirmed the 'unconfirmed' types if you know what I mean.

Brilliant

My vocal would sound even worse without some reverb. As it is I use a fairly short preset called 'living room' which kind of suits me. The backing is still a bit raw, as it hasn't been properly mixed and mastered yet, and I'm aware that there's a bit too much bass/echo on it. Also, the final verse needs boosting further to avoid is being too similar to the second one. And finally, the MP3 format needed by Soundcloud clips it a bit too much for my liking, but then hey ho, I'm not a pro. Wow, there's a rhyme, and a basis for the next song!!!

After a positive comment I'm really encouraged now. Final one for now, but sung (if that's the right word) by me. I'm in my Bob Dylan phase. If anybody wants to know what the heck the lyrics are about, I'll post an explanation. https://soundcloud.com/user-57587141/rear-view-mirror

Very nice - the sort of song I like. I can hear a touch of the early Marianne Fathfull.

No chance of that happening I suspect. I have no 'ins' to the music industry, no direct line to Simon Cowell or Kylie, so I guess my talents are destined to remain hidden. To be honest, I only do this because I find it interesting, really relaxing and incredibly satisfying when things slot into place, and something fairly indifferent suddenly sparks into life. Sometimes its as simple as taking a chord sequence and shifting it by one beat, and things change dramatically. A bit like finding the coin you've been looking for for years.

OK, no brickbats so far, so I'm emboldened to post another song. Again sung by my other half. This time a folk song, a musical take on one of Tennyson's famous poems. https://soundcloud.com/user-57587141/the-lady-of-shalott

I only asked as I don't want to permanently put people off visiting this site - my rubbish songs could easily do that! Anyway here's one that's sung by my wife Sue. Give me a chance to put on my tin hat and open the air raid shelter before you send the brickbats over. https://soundcloud.com/user-57587141/once-in-a-lifetime

Can I post my own rubbish songs?

That's OK. Sorry for the delay, but I've been up to neck in other stuff lately.

I've had a look back through all the notes and references that I used for my book, and I'm afraid I can't find the reference to the 'finger' penny. The decriptions of pretty much all the varieties in my books were based on reported varieties, but I did make sure as far as I could that I tracked down an example of whatever variety I was describing. Often this was based on eBay photographs of coins for sale, or pictures on dealer's websites - I certainly never tried to obtain them all for my collection, so I don't have a 'finger' penny example to photograph and put up on here. Sorry all, but I fear this variety is only going to come to light if somebody finds one and can relate their coin to the description I give i.e. a small projection from the 9th plume from the front of the helmet.