DaveG38

Duh!! Smacks forehead in gesture of stupidity.

Definitely Alan Hunt. He has been sending me catalogues by email for a number of years now.

I last had a catalogue from him about 6 months ago. In the past I have bought high grade maundy from him, but from memory the last catalogue was mostly hammered.

Hi Everybody, Does any body know when the Coin Monthly mag ceased publication? I know when it started and I have got most of the 1970s issues plus plenty from the 1980s. When it comes to the 90s, I have a few from 1991 and 1992, but its pretty obvious from the contents that they were getting very thin and were obviously running out of steam. So can anybody help with a final date or volume/issue number? Thanks.

In the early 1980s they went to fortnightly for a while, then reverted back to monthly. I would assume from this that this was their peak sales period, but that fortnightly just didn't work out.

Fair enough. I wasn't really criticising, just lamenting the need for some better information.

Pity he couldn't include some illustrations of the kinds of fakes to look out for, or maybe a reference to any websites where these are shown.

Just looked through my Feb 1992 copy - all 66 pages of it. There are several references to future articles: Bottom of Page 7 - In Search of A Precursor - Part III - overdates and their precursors. P31 - In 'Market Movements' they planned to cover 2d, 11/2d, 1d and 1/2d in March. P40 - Still asking for coin lists, catalogues to be sent in for compiling the 'Market Movements' tables. P56 - Part 2 of 'The Gods of The Hindus' was to be included in the March edition. From this, I guess there was an abrupt end to the business - given the low sales they achieved in later years this isn't a surprise. In practice the mag was published on the second Thursday of the month preceding the cover date, and the March edition was planned to be published on 13 Feb 1992. This means that whatever occurred took place sometime between mid January and mid February 1992.

Well done that man!!! From memory, I don't recall seeing any advance notice suggesting there would be no March edition, but I'll go and hook it out and have a browse through it. Won't take long as it got thinner and thinner as the years went by. Again, many thanks for this info.

From a timing point of view, based on my own collection of Coin Monthly magazines, it seems likely that the last issue of the magazine was February 1992. If that is the case, then it is likely that there was no Coin Monthly Yearbook after this as the business folded, i.e. there would be no 1993 issue, which would normally have been worked on leading up to the end of that year. That would leave an obvious gap in the market, which Coin News may have picked up on, but they would not have been able to react quickly enough to put a yearbook out for 1993, so they were forced to do so in 1994.

You just got unlucky. Royal Mail don't examine everything that comes into the UK, but on this occasion they chose something of yours. I've probably bought several hundred coins from the US over the years, but I have only been caught for customs duties etc. on a couple of occasions. It's a lottery!

I have considered the idea of digitising the entire series of Coin Monthly and publishing them online for collectors to use. It's a hell of a task, and one that I would be happy to do (slowly) if I could be sure that there are no copyright issues. Unfortunately, when I tried to establish ownership of the copyright that proved to be a very tricky task, and so I abandioned the idea, even though I believe it would be very worthwhile.

As I think I said earlier, the last one I have is Feb 1992. I've never seen anything newer. A few years ago, I knew a lady who used to proof read for the magazine, but sadly she couldn't help either.

I've only got 12/66 and 01/67 I'm afraid. Most of my spares seem to cover the 1980s and 1990s. If you PM me your name and address, I'll send these two on. No charge. I'm happy to see a couple leave my crowded cupboard!

For reverse C, the top of the crown on the Irish harp points to a bead and the rim is very thin, whereas on reverse E, the top of the crown points to a space and the rim is thicker. There are other identifiers, but these should be enough for high garde examples.

From memory, I think the first issue was about November 1966. If you are interested, I have quite a lot of spares, where I purchased bulk lots to complete the set, and have many duplicates.

You could keep both, as the top example appears to be Rev E, whilst the bottom one looks like Rev C.

Two points. My understanding is that all 28 states have to agree the extension, and although it might be assumed Boris would vote for his own request, he might be able to say quite clearly that he votes against it. That seems to be a possibility. There is one other nuclear option open to him. Boris goes to the summit and outlines his plan for a deal on leaving. If he gets agreement, then no problem. If he doesn't, he is expected to ask for an extension. But if he resigns as PM immediately prior to signing and handing over the request for an extension, he is no longer legally obliged to make the request. It would take some choreography, but it could happen. At this point, no request has been made, the summit ends and the UK leaves with no deal in 14 days. Boris remains the Tory leader, just not PM, something he can justify with a massive hole in his majority. That would leave the opponents scrambling around for a PM to deliver the letter, but the problem is that the summit is over and there is no clear mechanism for obtaining the agreement of the other EU states. Anybody see any holes in this scenario. It has the advantage for Boris, of allowing him to claim he managed to deliver Brexit, despite all the efforts of parliament.

£8k.

That's really helpful. My grandparents died in the late 1970s/ early 80s and I have no idea what happened to their clock. I was just immediately struck by it when I saw your picture of the coin cabinet, especially so given the date in the mid 1930s, which would work very well with their ownership of one of these. Many thanks for the information about it. Sorry for the digression from coin related matters!

More interesting to me is the clock. My grandparents had an identical one many years ago. Who is the maker and do you know the model?

One of those few occasions where the sale price is way below estimate? Usually its the other way round.

Can't say I do, but you learn something every day!

More like Benny Hill to me!

I worked as a teenager in several J Lyons teashops during the late 1960s, prior to decimalisation, often on the till (it was this experience that sparked my interest in coins), and at that time I never once saw an Edward VII silver coin of any kind, nor did I see any pre-1920 silver coins. Even pre-1947 were scarce, but not that unusual, albeit generally very worn. Clearly, the sterling silver coins were being rapidly taken out of circulation even prior to decimal day. Given this, I would be surprised if many such coins stayed in circulation post-decimalisation. Bronze was not much different. Edward VII pennies were fairly common, halfpennies not so. Victorian pennies were readily available, albeit worn washers or old head in about Fine grade. I never once saw a Victorian halfpenny of any grade.