DaveG38

And the laugh is that because it's April Fools Day everyone thinks this is a joke........

I stole the timeline from Wikipedia My first computing experience was was with CP/M (anyone remember that - Digital research) using a Z80 card in an Apple ][, we had a massive brute of a hard disk with the amazing capacity of 5MB! Later we migrated to DOS and then Santa Cruz Xenix - using a Tandon AT with a 100MB disk (this hardware cost £2000 in 1986) My favourite operating system has to be RiscOS running on an Acorn Archimedes, though Amiga Dos was interesting So yes Bob, I am that old, and I haven't written a line of code for over 20 years now,so everything getting a bit rusty David Too cool David. I started with a TRS-80, with two floppy drives (one for the Operating system), with a fabulous 48k Memory board. Then on to a Olivetti PC with PCos operating system, then IBM PC, then IBM XT (5 MB disk), Multiple IBM AT's, Dell (multiple), and currently have a HP Omni27, Multiple channel, with Beats Audio! It been a great ride! When I first started in electronics it was tube technology, then tranisters, Then integrated circuits, then large scale IC's, then PC's on a chip (286,386.486, etc), and now multi-Core, and multi channel... Your TRS-80 sounds just like the ICL DRS8801 I first used around 1979/80. A basic word processor using large floppy discs and with two drives, one of which was used to load the operating system. It had a brown screen and yellow characters on screen and the delete function worked the opposite way to a modern PC - the cursor had to be ahead of the character to be deleted. It took me a little while to get used to the change when my first real PC arrived in 1990 or so.

Seller is from Leeds, it explains it all. Why? Is Leeds full of molesters?And sheep. Baaaaaaah owwwwwww Plenty of wellies sold in Leeds then?

Seller is from Leeds, it explains it all. Why? Is Leeds full of molesters?

Sam Fox is old as Peck and a carpet muncher. Spoilsport! Us old gits still need some fantasies left.

I gather that the reverse is going to be decided by open competition, so come on you lot and get cracking. I, for one, am willing to suggest Samantha Fox on the reverse - if there's room.

I'm slightly intrigued by the economics of counterfeiting. You've got the cost of the brass, not much I admit, then there's the casting process (most seem to be cast) including the smelting costs etc. Add to this the problems of getting the milling roughly right and the edge inscription and I'm surprised any amateur can make a profit out of it, even when carried out on a large scale. At the end of the day, it's a pound coin, which won't even buy you a cup of coffee, so getting large numbers into circulation in order to see a profit looks very tricky as well. It's not as though you can take bag fulls to the bank to pay into an account - even the most clueless bank clerk will pick up that something is wrong when they see bags full of what appear to be fake coins. Bank CCTV would likely pick up who was responsible and then its just a case of sorting out the account and sending in the boys in blue. So how do they circulate them in any quantities I wonder?

Mine's says it was a 1975 edition - are there two books? Mine also has Mr Cope's signature, but sadly not Rayner's, so it's impaired.

Nationwide. I dare say each bank charges what they see fit. Mine was with Natwest - all done and dusted in a few minutes. Easy and £10 wasn't too bad on a £1000 transaction. What if your payment was only £40 like OP's? That's an extra 25% on your overheads! That's different. I wouldn't have paid using IBAN in that case. My comment was really concerned with the difference in charges, not the ratio of charges to cost, which would be even worse in the case you quote.

Nationwide. I dare say each bank charges what they see fit. Mine was with Natwest - all done and dusted in a few minutes. Easy and £10 wasn't too bad on a £1000 transaction.

Where's this £25 charge come from? I've just bought £1000 of coins from a German dealer and the charge for bank transfer was £10, not £25. That includes any transaction charges for conversion to Euros.

Sorry azda, but what's the issue here? From your post it seems they bought it from you and then tried onward selling at a higher price, which seems fair enough if they can. Or is there something I've missed?

Not hard to find. Ebay is littered with them, starting at around £99. Quite why anybody would think them rare when they are all over the site when you put in the search term '2014 Britannia' I really don't know.

There's some very pretty sheep around us. I'd better not mention the lambs or I shall be accused of being a lambophile. Mint sauce. Baaaaah!

Hi all. Here's a close up of the date of my latest purchase, a 1720 halfcrown. Is this a 1720 plain or a 1720/17? Any ideas?

Well, I bought it as a 1720 not 1720/17, but from a foreign dealer, so I wasn't sure. The shape of the '0' is somewhat irregular perhaps suggesting it is over something else. However, since I posted I have checked out London Coins archive and had a look at web images using Google Images and it seems that the 1720 does have an odd shaped '0' whereas the overdate seems to have a much more regular one. I'm coming to the view that mine was correctly attributed by the seller as a plain 1720. Either way, that's another gap filled!!

Prices on ebay are already softening. One in its RM packaging went for £205 earlier followed by a similar one at £64. Packaged coins within the set were going as BINs at £200 then went down to £150 or so, but prices started to drop down to around £70 for a single UNC example. Circulated coins seem to have started out at around £60-80, but then dropped to the £25-30 mark and now one has gone for £7.55. Normal service should be resumed shortly.

Just lucky I guess. I usually collect all my decimal coins from change, but very occasionally, I can't find a particular example and so resort to ebay. I've yet to pay more that a couple of £s for any example. Exception was the undated 20p which cost me £25.00. I don't think I'll be going for Chris's aquatic error coin though, nor do I expect to find a 1983 NEW 2p coin either, not without paying around £600+ or so. Problem is that I can get some very nice pre-decimal for that kind of money, coins which would be much more interesting.

I couldn't find one in circulation, so I bought mine for £2.49 about 2 years ago.

I still need one of these to complete the date run, but have never seen one in 30 years. With such a low mintage its likely that very few survived in any condition, let alone in a decent grade.

Yes, China and the US also trade with the EU, but the scale of that trade is many orders of magnitude beyond that of Scotland. Also, their trade is subject to border controls and customs, which seems to me would apply to Scotland also. It's not a matter of obstacles being put in front of Scotland, more a matter of explaining what a 'yes' decison means. Surely the Scottish voters need to know exactly what will happen if they say 'yes' rather than rely on the SNPs biased view of what might happen? The issue of the use of the pound was never a question of 'bullying', a ridiculous charge from the SNP, but rather a statement of reality for Scots to consider. Nobody is saying they must vote 'no', but are saying if they vote 'yes' there are consequences, one of which would be no currency union. Ditto the issue of the EU. It seems to me that Barosso has spelled out reality. Scots can Ignore it if they wish, but can't now claim that they were not told what would happen if they vote 'yes.' As for the oil, it isn't Scotland's. Scotland will have a tax take on it, but the actual brent crude will be traded in the world's oil market, so Scotland wouldn't be charging the UK any more for it than it costs at present (within the obvious variations of the market price).

If Scotland were to become a member of the EU automatically then I'd agree with you. However, if Barosso is right and Scotland's accession were delayed by the average of around 8 years or so, or didn't manage to gain access at all for some reason, then the border between Scotland and England would become a border between the EU and the rest of the world. That would surely bring all the controls associated with an international border i.e. border controls, customs etc.Why the Rest of the World? Do we stop trading on a worldwide scale if we're not in the EU. Thats quite a Statement to make Well, the EU is a trading bloc with its own internal rules. Trade with non-EU countries is I believe carried out on entirely different terms, so if Scotland were outside the EU the terms of its trading with the EU might well be different from what they are at present. In this case, it seems to me there would have to be a border and customs etc.

If Scotland were to become a member of the EU automatically then I'd agree with you. However, if Barosso is right and Scotland's accession were delayed by the average of around 8 years or so, or didn't manage to gain access at all for some reason, then the border between Scotland and England would become a border between the EU and the rest of the world. That would surely bring all the controls associated with an international border i.e. border controls, customs etc.

It seems to me that Mr Barosso I assume the rational goes. The UK is part of the EU so if Scotland leaves the UK it is also leaving the EU. It would then be in the position of having to reapply and take its turn with any other East European countries in the queue. Re-entry could take years. So it will be a new Scottish passport and work visas for any scots wanting to live and work in England/Wales and NI. Of cause then the there's the whole immigration debate, we can't keep the Romanians out but we could the Scots. It seems to me to be a bit more interesting than that. As it currently stands, trade between Scotland and the rest of the UK is conducted across an open border. That would also, of course, be the case if Scotland were to be an EU member in its own right as an independent state. However, if Scotland votes to leave the UK, then as Mr Barosso says, and I see no reason not to believe him as he's the head of the Commission, that would leave the interesting situation where the border between Scotland and rUK would be an external border to the EU. If we then believe Mr Barosso when he says that Scotland would have to apply for membership of the EU and this might take years and might not happen at all, what happens to the border in the meantime? For people desperate to get into the EU, as currently constituted, the Scotland/England border would be one of the most porous in the EU and would likely result in a new and different route for entry. In this situation, I can't see any alternative but for there to be border controls between the two countries. The SNP says it won't happen, but my analysis here suggests that there might not be any option for the rUK as it would become a frontier state of the EU. Of course, Scotland might patrol its borders in a very efficient way, but I'm guessing that the Scottish government will have other priorities and it might come down to England initiating border controls. Mr Barosso's statement also raises interesting questions about trade between Scotland as a non-EU state and rUK which would be an EU state. I don't know much about the treaties that guarantee free movement within the EU, but that free flow presumably does not apply across international borders from outside the EU. That would mean customs controls at the borders with Scotland. It might also affect not just the currency for import and export, but also the price of goods, depending on what the trade tariffs are for imports into the EU. In short, it may be cheaper for rUK companies to import from within the EU than it would be to continue to buy from Scotland. None of this, if it came about, would be good for Scotland.

Mr Barosso seems to have put his two-pennorth into the independence debate in his answers to Andrew Marr. The thing I find most compelling about what he said is that as he's a politician, he will have been very clear in advance on what he should say about the question of Scottish Independence and the EU. From my perspective, I'm sure he will have taken that guidance before coming to the UK, and I'm of the view that what he said is very much the official position of the EU. I very much doubt that he said what he said off the top of his head.