pokal02

I paid £50 for a real one, so £26 for a copy's pushing it. (I also dabble in 50p's - can't bring myself to pay the £60 odd being asked for a 2009 Shield - why are they so expensive?) I'll occasionally have a copy of a coin I'll never afford, eg the Petition & 1644 Oxford crowns (paid £10 for the first & 70 for the second). Was outbid on the copy H7 testoons at Stewartby - would never pay £3-400 even if an original is £40k.

Thanks for reply - looks like I'll have to settle for one of the Chinese ones on ebay (as my storage space is limited).

So to clarify - would all 3 types fit into either the CGS or NGC boxes? (I've only a few slabbed coins but they're all three - would like to get them into 1 20-space box)

.6 or 10 different values of Unc/MS is absurd by any standards. A coin is either Unc/MS or it isn't. The next highest grade should be GEF. (I accept that some coins have more so-called eye appeal than others, but that shouldn't affect the grade) Fortunately 95% of my stuff is between F and VF so I don't need to worry about such things.

According to the Telegraph today, a hoard of c. 160 pennies was found near Watlington, Oxon recently mostly of Coelwulf II. This is interesting as I believe there were only nine specimens known previously. Presumably we can expect some to find their way to the market and reduce the five-figure prices on these by (?) 75% or so? ( I'm currently lacking one so would hope they come down quite a bit!). When was the last example of a reign/major type becoming 10+ times more common overnight? Most Burgred coins were discovered in 1817, there must be a more recent example?

Lots of auctions coming soon, so didn't bid. Might have been tempted by the halfpound if I'd known it would go below low estimate.

There is currently an 1820 £2 advertised on ebay for £8,500. Unfortunately he wants another £22,500 for standard postage! (I';m guessing with a feedback score of zero he hasn't worked out that ebay takes 10% of the postage too). To be fair Spink quotes it as £62,500 in FDC so perhaps it's a bargain (gold's not my field so don't know).

1860 penny (and many dated 1861-63) in the mid 1960's. At this stage it was theoretically possible to get a shilling/sixpence as old as 1816 but I only saw one that was pre-1920 (an Edward VII 6d with unreadable date).

A quick query - can anyone confirm the original price asked by the Mint for these? I bought both all those years ago but can't find any record of how much they cost - would guess at about £4?

Presumably the 1972 set would have been priced higher as it included the crown - so either £9 for that & £4 for the others, or £7 (1972) and £4.50 (others) to make £25. (seems high compared to £3 for the 1970 but I guess inflation was rampant between '71 & '75).

The individual coins (the 50p's anyway) - seem to go for as much/more than the sets - I guess anyone with a few would be better off breaking them up.

Yes, I expanded into hammered groats (and then shillings) when my crowns were virtually complete. That doesn't preclude looking at crowns and collecting a few more varieties as and when they turn up (I've added the 1888 wide date and Exeter 'Barrel garniture') in the last couple of years). I don't intend to collect overstruck letters or dates though.

My vague memory was that it was the 72 to 75 sets that were issued late (all together in about 1976?) I thought the 70 and 71 had been issued previously but could be that all 6 were issued together. Incidentally I've now seen £3.15 quoted (in Collectors Coins - Decimal)d as the issue price for the '71 - but this too apparently taken from Krause & converted.

Thanks - I know the exchange rate in 1970 was fixed at 2.4/£1 which gives £3.65. The £ started floating in 1971 (not sure what month or indeed what month the proof set was issued) - but it doesn't seem to have moved much in that year so I'm thinking probably the same price in £ for the '71.

It's a decent catalogue with a couple of possibles for me although no 'must-haves'.

Definitely not a groat - I think it's a base penny of Philip & Mary

I bought a high-end coin from Heritage a few months ago and was pleasantly surprised at the customs charge. Now I know why - I'd imagined VAT to be 20%!!

Absolutely right. I would estimate I downgrade 90% of all my purchases by anything from 1/4 to 1 1/4 grades from the grade suggested. Spink are still the harshest graders (and are the source of the only two coins I've actually upgraded from a dealer-stated grade). We need more books like the Guide to Grading British coins to cover earlier milled issues. I still think if I grade a coin AVF and someone else grades it VF that's just a difference of opinion, but if I grade a coin Fine and someone else grades it VF or higher, one of us should be wrong!.

If we take an 'averagely-scarce' C2 crown, say 1667, the value of a VF relative to an F in Spink has actually declined from 1990 to 2017, although an EF has increased relative to both - however from 1981 to 2017 the F to VF ratio is fairly similar (no EF quoted in 1981). A quick look at three hammered groats implied that VF's have very slightly outperformed F's. So the difference is not as dramatic (outside the very top grades) as some would have us believe. I tend to agree that the proportion of completists like me, who started out by collecting date runs from change in the 1960's, has fallen somewhat as the first 20 years or so of decimals didn't lend themselves to this, but may still rise in the future - presume there must now be 40 or so different date 1p's/2p's (and four portraits).in circulation which could interest the next generation of date-runners.

The dealers, led by Spink, have been trying to convince us for years that grade is everything and rarity nothing, but I'm not totally persauded yet. My impresssion, although I haven't studied it in detail, is that middle-grade.rarities are doing rather well. Certainly in the Motcomb groat collection they all went for more than estimate - and crowns seem to be similar . It's easy to upgrade a 1671 or 1679 to VF or so, but try bidding for a 1675/1697 (if you can find one) or even a slightly scarce date like 1706 and the book price and estimate will soon be out of the window.

As has been said previously, it's important to look at the coin not the slab. I need a 1680 crown and typed it into the Heritage search site. There is one in VF 30 coming up next month which isn't even a British Fine, particularly the obverse. However, there are two recently sold 1680's in VF 25 which are both indisputably better - Fine to GF maybe.

That's what I thought... so the LC conversion scale is wrong & should read VF30 and VF35.

So the Sheldon scale goes straight from F35 to EF40? What happened to VF?

I tend to put most of my unwanted duplicates/areas that I no longer collect there. Generally I find that milled does quite well, but hammered does badly - which implies there are a few hammered bargains to be had there.

Most coins have two 'strands' of rarity - their rarity as a type, and the rarity of the exact date/bust/ mintmark etc. So the 1951 matt proof crown would only interest a very few collectors (most will be quite happy with an ordinary one) whereas a Cromwell Crown, although not especially rare, it the only one of its type so goes for more (relative to the number of extant specimens). The 1601 crown is overpriced (and the 1602 underpriced) relative to its rarity for the same reason, i.e. non-date collectors only need the 1601.