Coinery

Their eBay postage times are about as reliable as their completion dates for slabbing, I'm STILL waiting for my eBay purchase! They were also a month late, of an already lengthy time period, when I got some coins slabbed! They need some quality UK competition!

Great looking site, Tim, do continue to drop in every once and a while, we can never have enough experts of types on here!

Easy mistake to make when there's no initial cross or i.m. Too kind!

I can't find this one anywhere? Any suggestions or references would be very much appreciated!

lightening response Clive, thank-you! Not sure what was going on there...I was reading it as LVND rather than LVNDE, meaning I was looking for some mystery moneyer beginning with E WHOOPS!

I was watching this round the £194 mark, and didn't think it had much left in it at that point. The bust is excellent, the flan looked good but, the very poor legend, off-centre strike, and overall scruffy look, has me saying no bargain!

Will be getting myself a cup of coffee and half an hour tomorrow!

Yes, that '68 is absolutely to die for, I wish it were mine! Or I wish I could afford for it to be mine!

The thing to do is look at one in the flesh rather than an image, it is surprising how different they look, and how obvious the difference is. I know there will be those debatable early strike examples, but a true proof is unmistakeable...but I used to think exactly the same thing!! Thank you all for your kind comments. I agree, it can be difficult to tell from a photo but proofs definitely have a different look and feel in the hand The 1868 above is, at least to me, very obviously different from a currency strike. In this particular case, the clincher is the copper content as currency strikes are all bronze. In some cases, though, proofs and currency strikes look identical in photos. The coin on the left is a 1964 currency strike, while the one on the right looks and feels like a proof (it also has provenance as such), though appears no different in the photo. I understand that the known 1964 proofs are all well-handled, as is this one. I need to work at capturing the essence of the proof in a photo somehow, but it's not easy! That should confuse things! They appear end on end on my phone, which gave me the chance to look at the images first, before going back to your text to check which way round they were! I had your currency and proof the wrong way round! I think it's absolutely right that experiencing the actual coins in-hand is the only way forward with proofs. You can hear the words 'specially prepared planchets,' 'even rims,' and 'this tone and that tone' for ever and a day but, the only way anyone is ever going to 'get' it, is by handling as many proofs as they can! It's comparable to dipping, and that is, you only ever really get to know a dipped coin by dipping a few yourself. The great mystery really quickly disappears once you've sat down with a box of old junk and a jar of Goddard's!

Can anyone explain what is meant by "artificially toned, as issued," in reference to the 1934 and '35 pennies in Peck?

I had a coin rejected by CGS with miniscule/near-invisible traces of verdigris. In fact, it was so minimal, it was totally gone, following a light wipe of Acetone.

I can't believe how horrible my penny was under magnification, and how much verd there was in the nooks and crannies, I struggled to put it up here! Feast your eyes as, believe it or not, this is apparently an NGC MS63, complete with verd!

That's a horrible coin, worth half of £400, surely? eBay is as crazy as usual! I know it's an R&P coin, but it's not in the least bit attractive. There's got to be a better one out there for that money?

You mean like the photo below. I'm honestly not sure of the reason, but it only seems to affect the proofs. The top grade currency strikes all seem to have good lustre. It could be that because many 1950 pennies circulated in the Caribbean for a while, the sea air got to them and gave them a tone quite quickly? Possibly? I've had 3 decent 1950 currency pennies through my hands now, all with that uniform tone you can see on accumulator's penny, which is never the way you see other coins of the period tone? But isn't Accumulator's picture a proof? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick again? Yes, of course, but it's a good example of the tone I've seen on my currency pennies of the same year. I've got a few pictures to take tomorrow, I'll get an image of mine up!

You mean like the photo below. I'm honestly not sure of the reason, but it only seems to affect the proofs. The top grade currency strikes all seem to have good lustre. It could be that because many 1950 pennies circulated in the Caribbean for a while, the sea air got to them and gave them a tone quite quickly? Possibly? I've had 3 decent 1950 currency pennies through my hands now, all with that uniform tone you can see on accumulator's penny, which is never the way you see other coins of the period tone?

Many thanks for that, gents (and for all the images)! I have to admit to being thrown by it, having a 'regular' looking lustred '35! Did they do something similar with 1950? I seem to see so many top-rated coins of this year with an even brown tone?

Many thanks, Paul, for putting this up, I would definitely have missed it otherwise! I'm going to follow it up tomorrow, sounds like a great project!

Yes, but everybody's different, and most people set their own personal parameters when it comes to collections. I doubt there are many who have every single example/die combination in the bunhead run. But it's their decision to what extent they go, and not up for criticism ~ any more than I would criticise you for your coin collecting/selling choices. You came across so strong in your two posts last night, that I wondered if you had some sort of vested interest in that particular coin. Did you ? I have to confess myself, and I feel that I can, in view of the fact I'm going to be sidestepping the forum for a while, that I can easily relate to a decision to stick to high-grades only, in view of the fact that for most people there is no need to spend large sums on washers, when there is mostly still a number of 'affordable' high-grade coins to accumulate, and I reckon most of us fall into that category! However, when/if a time ever arrives for us humbles, where we have nothing left to spend our money on to complete a collection, then I guess the mega-expensive, low-grade, filler would be a hurdle we would all have to face, and very few of us could honestly predict their actions in that situation. It must surely always seem like a mad concept to any collector to sit a Poor coin in a Top-Flight collection, when there are still numerous other coins to collect in the series? I can only speculate, but gap-filled high-class collections must still irk nearly as much as the original gap? Surely most collectors must set out having psychologically prepared themselves for the fact that a 1933 penny is not going to grace their collection in ANY grade, and equivically, surely a great many others must have done something similar with the other major rarities and, fortunately, have never stressed about it? I for one would not feel niggled at a tray of pennies that numbered 1932, 1934, I would never have attempted the series otherwise!

Absolutely agree, I have many Three-Pounders! Therein lies the difference between WANTING a coin, and WAITING for one! I'm trying to up the few EF GVI shillings I have. Rarely does ebay come up with a photo anything like good enough to see better than EF. Pictures are seldom good enough for a clear ID! My method for buying G6 UNC on eBay is: find potential UNC's, bid less than EF price (you'll win 1in 5), 1 in 10 will be an improvement on what you already have, then take a good quality photo and resell your EF's and profit a quid or two...by the time you land your genuine UNC it's free! Even cheaper than mean old Peter's purse!

Absolutely agree, I have many Three-Pounders! Therein lies the difference between WANTING a coin, and WAITING for one!

Massively so! As I say, £15 for a genuine UNC delivered is tops for me! Duplicate, sorry, pub wifi today!

Massively so! As I say, £15 for a genuine UNC delivered is tops for me! That's if I can get near one without Dave the Snipe nicking it from under my nose!

Ahh, VS & Rob, just like my 1942 farthing, yes?

Hah, I never even looked at the description, just the pictures, naturally assuming that it must have been described as a Palladium Unc to make those prices...I think £25's a fair price then! Blimey, what a price! I was on A&C's earlier, and John's got some G6 UNC shillings at half that, and they're dealer prices! Good old eBay!

Bit of an optical illusion for me, is it a raised or sunken dot?