DaveG38

I'm not sure why you are grumbling. The mere fact that you are aware of a price differential between quoted and reality means there is always a bit of scope for arbitrage. If the quoted price is too low, then just accept that you will have to pay more. After all, if you have paid a couple thousand for a 1934 crown or the 1989 proof set, then a sum less than this shouldn't be too much of a problem. The fact that you recognise the price in the books is way too low will give you an advantage over those who don't want to pay more than the reassuring figure quoted in whatever reference. People put off by quoted figures are competition eliminated - that's a reduction in the size of the problem because when you see a coin that's hard to find the chances are that others are looking for the same thing. Many collectors use price guides as a sort of comfort blanket when in reality it should never be more than a rule of thumb reference for the most commonly seen items. If CCGB quotes a price that is lower than Spink, many will not pay Spink prices because the other book says you can get it cheaper. The reality is though that both could be wrong as neither (can) take into account eye appeal, nor hope to comprehensively cover the market. Prices can be and frequently are out by a factor of two in either direction. Whilst I understand the logic of what you are saying, I personally quite like the reassurance of a guide price for a coin, as I may have no idea where to go with it. Without an idea, it may be likely that I will pay well over what it is really worth (yes, I know that's what somebody will pay and since I paid it that is its true value) and so judging what its worth to me is made that bit more difficult. For example, I was the losing bidder in the Cumbria auction for the 1693 farthing in F. There are no guide prices for this coin and little to go on, and so I stopped at £2K. My only guide was one on the CC website in VF/GVF which went for £9K. Without that £9K ceiling for the stated condition, I would have had no real idea of when to stop bidding. I guess my grumble isn't about the prices of truly rare coins, but the lack of realistic price and rarity of those which are currently considered to be of 'normal' availability. For me the 1843 shilling is a classic example.

1728 R&P - A tad optimistic on grade here. 1728 R&P 1728 R&P 1686 halfpenny (item 028) 1686 halfpenny Rob, Thanks for the information. I was probably aware of the Nicholson 1686 halfpenny but it had slipped my mind. As far as the 1728 shilling goes, it's nice to see that they exist - I just wish that one would come along in my price range. I guess what I'm grumbling about is that the price guides for these coins don't seem to reflect reality for the collector. So, if I never see a 1728 R&P shilling for sale in say VF condition, how come a price guide can specify what the price might be. My guess is that they don't really find examples of everything when compiling the new year's guide, but simply rely on the dates they do see and correlate these with those they don't. In this way, if they came up with a price for the 1728 say 20 years ago and never see another all they do is keep the price proportionally in line with say the historical differential with a 1728 plain. What this doesn't do, which is my grumble, is reassess the true rarity. A classic example of this is the 1843 shilling, which for years was given prices near to the 1842 and 1844, yet was almost never seen, and when I saw (and bought it) one the price was way off the guide book scale.

It's nice to see that there are plenty of 'ordinary' (no offence) collectors on here. I don't quite know why, but I sort of had the feeling you were all rich and top payers for top quality. My highest price was £1900 plus buyers premium for an EF 1934 crown a year or so ago and £2500 for the 1989 gold proof set. Otherwise, even my older stuff tends to be at sensible prices in the low hundreds or less. Occasionally I splash on something a bit dearer when it comes to filing gaps e.g. the 1689 farthing from Colin Cooke for a shade under £500. Trouble is that even in the low hundreds, its easy to burn cash at a phenomenal rate when several coins come up at once. Unfortunately that seems to be how it works. For ages there's nothing then a whole line of stuff comes along and I have to dig deep or cut Mrs G's frock allowance!! Some hope.

Nice bog head! Wonder whether cargo was bullion or coin Rumour has it the cargo was 1903 & 05 Halfcrowns...that would worry a couple of Chinese manufacturers. Interesting that the announcement of this find, which totals some 200 tons of silver, almost immediately depressed the bullion price for silver by about 20%. The price went from around £25 per troy ounce to £20 almost in an instant.

I've got one in my pocket right now and I don't think its in much poorer condition than this one.

Is it me? Because I can't see any sign of James II here and all for $100!!! http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320763900930&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:GB:1123

No, you've lost me. +1 He's a well known eBay seller who sells much modern, common, easily avaialble coins for peanuts and probably makes a small living mostly off the extra bit added to the postage charges. He often sells decimal proofs and modern (Liz II) pre-decimal. If you want a 1986 proof twopence then he's your man - that sort of thing.

Thanks for the advice everyone. The only reason for considering the London Coin show is that I'm in the south east so London is the obvious choice of event to go to. Birmingham is 200 plus miles away, so a bit of a traipse. Overall, London doesn't seem to get a resounding thumbs up, so maybe I'll give it a miss and put the cost of attending towards a coin!!

He grades and slabs them himself, as I understand it. However, as has been said, if you like the coin and the price, then ignore the slab and buy.

A start point might be to go back to the last system restore point and see if that then clears the problem, although I doubt that an update would impact Outlook as its a very simple programme. The only other option I can think of that I have used in the past is to go to the accounts section of outlook and look through the details concerning the account that's misbehaving - in particular, take out the password and insert it again manually. I have found that this works sometimes. Otherwise, go through all the other details relating to the account, making sure that no boxes are checked that shouldn't be or vice versa.

Bilnic, Regarding Edward VII, you are right that there are varieties for 1904. In practice there are two obverses for 1904 and two reverses, giving 4 different types. For 1905 there are reportedly the same two obverses as for 1904, giving two varieties for this year, although obverse 1 is unconfirmed according to Davies. Similarly, for 1906 there are the same two obverses as for 1904 and 1905, giving two varieties.

Help, I'm confused dot com! My latest version of CCGB is 2007 (I buy one every few years) and I have been checking out the details of the 1911 shilling. According to Davies, there are 3 obverse and 1 reverse for this year giving 1+A, 2+A and 3+A types. According to CCGB2007 (and earlier issues e.g. 1998 and 1990) the 1911 shilling comes as 2 obverse and 2 reverses all fully meshed to give 1+A, 1+B, 2+A and 2+B. However, the differentiator for the reverses is the pointing of the 'I' in 'GEORGIVS.' The problem is that this inscription appears on the obverse NOT the reverse, so my questions are: 1) Are there 4 obverses based on the combinations of hollow/flat neck and 'I' to a bead/space or just the 3 reported by Davies? If Davies, the non-existent one is the flat neck with 'I' to a space combination. Anybody got one? 2) Are there any reverse die types other than A that anybody knows about? If so what are they paired with? 3) Is this error put right in later CCGBs? DaveG38

I can't remember too many of them. They were going as a blur of bulk lots, but I was just generally struck by the way in which the same online bidder was scooping up pretty much every bulk lot regardless of price. And prices were almost always going into the hundreds and that's before the buyer's premium plus VAT (18%). I can only think that the buyer has a history of doing this and knows that with bulk lots of the kind being sold, the sheer number of coins, even at 99p or so will still turn a profit, especially with a little bit of extra on the postage. What I can't get my head around is the sheer tedium involved in photographing, listing, packing and posting all those coins as part of the eBay process. The numbers of coins involved for this guy from the auction must run into several thousands, if not 10 thousand. Alternatively, maybe he wants them for his shop or stall as kiloware or lucky dips, still with an eye to making an overall profit, albeit slowly.

Example please ? Too many to mention, but how about 130 florins of George V and VI (50% silver type plus cupro-nickel) in average circulated condition going at a bit under £500, which with buyers premium plus VAT is around £600. Also large numbers of bulk lots of mostly 20th Century or foreign, going for hundreds of pounds at a time. Many went to the same bidder, who I very much doubt had gone through each lot to find the gems that would turn a profit on these lots. I just found it extraordinary compared to say the prices at one of the specialist coin auctions. Most likly a dealer hoovering up bulk lots but it was difficult to see any easy profits - just a hell of a lot of hard work to turn them out to collectors, whether on eBay or at fairs.

Was it just me or were prices going absolutely mad? I watched most of the lots go and the gold went pretty much at the bullion price with very little bidding. However, many of the other multiple coin lots seemed to go for phenonenally high prices and many to the same online bidder. Did anybody else watch or buy anything? Did you think it looked crazy like I did?

I should learn to read posts from beginning to end! Thanks Dave. And I thought you were being modest!!

For a good standardisation of UK grading, you need the book entitled 'The Standard Guide to Grading British Coins: Pre-decimal Issues (1797 to 1970)' by Derek Allen. Copies are currently available on Amazon for around £7.94.

Peter, Are you sure you don't want to be called Rob? A bit like Rodney always being Dave! Whilst you consider these important matters, I'll just thank you for looking through your Coin/Coin Monthly magazines. Sadly the one you have found is the one I already have just before the May issue. The Mar/Apr one mentions what will be in the next issue and, since this isn't the same as what is in the May issue, it's pretty certain that there's at least one more that I don't have. Oh well it was worth a shot and thanks again. Regards. DaveG38

I will check out my stash tonight. It says a lot when I recently took 100+ coin news to the dump and yet I still have plenty of monthlies hanging around complete with post-its. Thanks Rob. Anything you can add would be much appreciated. I too have around 120 or so duplicates waiting for a new home. Mostly around the early 1980s, but not 1980 itself.

You would be a real Hero Dave, if you could scan them all in and publish a PDF..... I wonder who owns the copyright? Mmmm, intersting idea. By my reckoning the publication ran from Nov 1966 until at least Feb 1992, which is 25 years and 4 months, plus however many months there are after Feb 1992. During 1979 and 1980, there was a period of about 8 months when two editions were published. So, by my reckoning that makes around 312 issues, plus any beyond Feb 1992. Say 320 in all. In its prime, it had around 130 pages per issue, but in its early days 70 or so and around 80 just before it died. So lets say that's 100 pages per edition on average. So, 32,000 ish scans. Do I feel that heroic? That's a lot of work, but I might consider it if I could be sure that there are no copyright issues any longer. Does anybody know what the law says and how to establish ownership? Publication could be as a CD/DVD depending on file sizes. Maybe a boxed set! And the final question, would anybody want it? My other half would as it would clear out one shelf of a cupboard - room for more dresses! Interestingly, the lady who owns the small shop next to where my wife works told me that she was employed by Coin Monthloy in the late 1980s/1990s on the sales/editorial team. I'm not sure what as exactly, but its a small world.

Think yourself lucky. I once got a Max Bygraves vinyl record from mine and this was at the time of the meteoric rise of the Beatles and the Stones. I don't think it ever got a play, so its 'Uncirculated'. Get it!! :rolleyes: :D :lol:

Ok, own up, which one of you outbid me on the 1693 farthing earlier today? I need to know which effigy to stick the pins into!

And the other thing is that it seemed a little odd sitting there in amongst much more mundane material, in a rather obscure auction house (no offence intended Argentum, but they are not the first name that comes to mind when thinking of coin auctions). If genuine, I'd have expected it to have surfaced in one of the larger auction houses. The way it was played down rather suggested it might be not quite as it appeared and now you say that the room wasn't interested makes it likely that it wasn't what it seemed to be. Even as a forgery it would have been interesting, but not £2360 worth of interesting. Oh well, somebody got an expensive piece of copper and I'm not in trouble with Mrs G.

That's the one! Have I missed out on a 'bargain', or had a lucky escape? It looked genuine to me, but given that a VF specimen went for £9,500, I felt that anything above £2,000 for this one in Good Fair, maybe NF was as far as I wanted to go. Sometimes filling a gap isn't always a case of 'at any cost' and for me this was one such occasion. Hey ho. I console myself with the thought that this issue wasn't really a circulation piece and that's what I collect, rather than all the other trials, proofs and assorted types. But I've still got the dolly and the pins!!!! I had a good look at it and did not think it was genuine. Looked like tooling on the exergue although I didn't put it under a scope. There was also a lot of grime in and around the date but not on the legends. I understand all of the 9's on these look enlarged but it looked too bad to be a pattern piece. I may be wrong but a £2360 price is a long way to go for a coin you hadn't inspected first hand! If it's any consolation there was no interest in the room with book against phone all the way from £40! Looks like I may have had a lucky escape. I based my assessment of it on the obverse, which definitely seems to be obverse 3 not 4 (as found on the 1694) plus the fact that as you say the '9' on these is a very odd size. I also examined the only other one I have seen and the lettering etc. plus the date numbering seemed to be OK. However, I agree that was not in the hand. I also guess it could have been a forgery, either contemporary or otherwise, although its hard to see where an original would have come from, either then or now.

That's the one! Have I missed out on a 'bargain', or had a lucky escape? It looked genuine to me, but given that a VF specimen went for £9,500, I felt that anything above £2,000 for this one in Good Fair, maybe NF was as far as I wanted to go. Sometimes filling a gap isn't always a case of 'at any cost' and for me this was one such occasion. Hey ho. I console myself with the thought that this issue wasn't really a circulation piece and that's what I collect, rather than all the other trials, proofs and assorted types. But I've still got the dolly and the pins!!!!