ChKy

Stafford, R. (1982). Varities of the Halfcrown 1816-1967. Coin Monthly, Part 1 George III to William IV, June 1982, 66-69. Part 2 Victoria Young Head, July 1982, 66-69. Part 3 Victoria Jubilee Head to Edward VII, Aug. 1982, 104-107. Part 4 George V and VI, Sept. 1982, 88-91. Part 5 Elizabeth II, Oct. 1982, 76-78. he published lots of articles about varities. More citations to come soon...

Dear all! I heard that in the 19th century Britain had a shortage of coinage stil, so people started to import so called French Pennies into your country. The 5 and 10 Centimes pieces circulated in Britain as Half Pennies and Pennies respectively. Besides French coinage the coins of Spain, Italy or Luxembourg were imported as well (so countries directly or indirectly connected to each other by the Latin Monetary Union). After some time companies started to counter strike those coins with advertisements Here I have a 10 Centimos piece from Spain showing A.B.C.o as counter mark. Does anyone have information about, who released that one? Thanks a lot for your efforts

I have some citations about that topic: Scott J.G. (1975). British Countermarks on Copper and Bronze coins. Spink & Son Ltd., London. ISBN 10: 0900696648, ISBN 13: 978-0-90069-664-0 Schulze, W.G. (1978). Gegenstempel auf Münzen Napoleons III (Teil 2). Die Münze, Nr. 4, April 1978, 190-193. Hoffmann, P.K. (1978). Leserbrief in Die Münze, Nr. 7, Juli 1978, Seite 354 zu: Gegenstempel auf Münzen Napoleons III von Schulze, W.G. Die Münze, Nr. 3/4, März/April 1978. Meyer, H. (1978). Französische Münzen – in England umgelaufen. Die Münze, Nr. 5, Mai 1978, 250-254. Most of the literature I found about the topic are written in German. Sorry for that...

which Pandas do you mean??

Dear members. I am looking for some high resolution pictures of the rare 1909 Penny variant Obverse 2 + reverse E. Would like to include them into our coin catalogue. Hope somebody can help us out. Many thanks in advance Cheers Christoph

I've got this one, pretty low grade though Hi Gary! For our purpose is it more than sufficient :-) Cheers Christoph

Thanks for the advice. I will try to get that permission. BTW: You own a very notable web page.

"Profit" is a kind of relative definition. You might received more Pounds/Euro/Franken of paper Fiat Money. But you have to estimate the amount of goods and services (eg sugar, coffee, gasoline, hair cut) you can purchase with the money. Under normal conditions (means no economic trouble for example), the purchasing power stored in bullion should be nearly constant..

Hi folks! I am looking for a higher grade of that particular coin in order to include it into our collection/catalogue. I was chasing one of those at eBay. Surprisingly it I was outbid and the highest bid exceeded 25 Pounds. That surprised me... or is that a standard price for that piece?! 1942 Shilling at eBay eBay can be kind of depressing sometimes... Cheers Christoph

Hi Peckris! I am talking about long term investments of course. And every serious coin collector does arrange his/her collection under long term condition. Short term speculations are possible with higher risk only...

edit: I do remember clear that I purchased the Prussian 20 Mark piece (the German equivalent to the Sovereign) for 150 DM (~75 Euro) in the nineties .

I do remember clear that I purchased the Prussian 20 Mark piece (the German equivalent to the Sovereign) for 75 Euro. And I clearly remember the price drop in the early 80ties. There is no free market, the Hunt brothers manipulated the prices for Bullion in the late 70ties/early 80ties. And the prices for bullion were manipulated afterwards as well (in the other direction as well). I am 40 years old now and I am sure that you are older and more experienced than I am. But still I believe that you can beat inflation by purchasing bullion. You have to continously buy that stuff for years/decades in order to equalise peaks and troughs (in that particular case most of them are market manipulations anyway)...

Well.... I would not compare Goldman Sachs, Northern Rock, Lehmanns, Lloyds TSB, HBOS neither with our beloved coinsnor with precious metals like gold and silver. I am sure we are not in such a supposed bubble. Increasing prices are sign of "inflation fear" (which is not believed by the people only - it has a substancial background). In my opinion it is not the wrong way to buy coins in order to hoard financial funds (human beings tend to do so for the last few thousand years). Either you try to purchase rare and sought items (coins/medals) or accumulate bullion ( that is the more simple way). From my knowledge people like Lehmanns speculated with the wrong things in the wrong manner. I tend to give not a single Pfennig ahh (wrong language, sorry)... Penny on things like certificates, debenture stocks, government bonds or property funds. In last consequence that kind of things are debts and in principle any kind of debt can vanish in case of deptor´s insolvency....

well.... from what I observed is, that prices for higher grade coins (in general spoken, not for British coins only) are continously increasing. Regarding the Spink catalogue... Last year I talked to a coin collector from UK in person. He told me that the Spink catalogue is a nice reference, but regarding the prices it "behaves like a pharmacy" (means denoted prices are too high)...

It is a coin with original lustre. It was red before, the EDTA removed a bit of the initial brown colour at the surface... The problem is, that I can not allow the green verdigris further growth on the coin´s surface...

Well... that depends on concentration, time scale and initial condition of the coin. The treatment with EDTA can cause an orange coloured and pitted surface. Surely I can bet, that you used an highly concentrated EDTA-solution, incubating for several hours a strongly corroded coin... I am talking about a diluted EDTA-solution and a treatment of minutes, not hours or days. And the coin was not "holed" by corosion. Such a coin tends to by worthless for a collector (in terms of financial value) anyhow...

edit: That copper carbonate dots are very harmful anyways and you have to remove them. By time the coins surface will be destroyed and other coins affected/infected. In German we have a word for that: Bronzepest (bronze & pest/plague)

That depends how deep the coorosion went through the material. EDTA do not desolve the elementary metal atoms, but the charged metal ions within the green copper carbonate.

In order to remove plaques of corrosion a solution of EDTA proved to be quite useful. By that kind of treatment the green deposit is removed within minutes. DISCLAIMER: You apply that treatment to your coins at your own risk. I am not responsable for any kind of disappointment

Hi at all! Unfortunately that link does not work any more. Does anybody of you have a copy of that pdf, still? So, please share that one once again. This article seems to be very interesting and I would like to include the citation into the literature section of my documentation. Many thanks!! Christoph

Yes, you are right. But I wouldn ´t show them here in order to prevent anti-German aversion ;-) Goetze produced a series of coin patterns as well.

Coins are potent story tellers... Here a 3 Mark piece (0.900 Ag - 15 g fine) minted just one year before the outbreak of WWI. Subject of that commemorative coin was the 100th anniversary of the war for freedom against Napoleon I. That is a common coin & rather cheap even in higher grade. Interesting to see how authorities managed to spread political propaganda thoughout the country. The eagle slaying the serpent can be found on Mexican coins as well. In this case the motive symbolized the antagonizm to France. The German eagle had beaten the French beast.

I found out that higher grade Edward VII florins are difficult to find, especially in case you reside outside UK I purchased two florins a couple of years ago for about 20 Euro each, which seemed to me to be a reasonable price. I will go for some pieces in xf condition later. For now I will simply stick onto those as a kind of reference piece. You have to be patiend on that issue and you have to look around until you find the right piece.

I added the picture below to show what I mean. That is a german 10 Pfennig piece minted prior WWI. The grading service estimates the grade at Xf-40. After I opened the slab in order to incorporate the coin into my collection I found that the coin has a significant rim damage. Furthermore it turned out that the coins surface was grinded/rubbed at the dominant "10" of the denomination (that rarely can be shown by scaning). In addition it shows to much wear in my view. In my opinion this coin is never ever at xf-condition. At highest it would reside at an intergrade between fine to very fine condition. I would have never purchased that one under other circumstances...

Acetone is an organic solvent und should be kept away from any kind of hydrophobic/amphipatic polymer (plasics) ;-) Like most collectors in my country/vicinity I do not like slabs anyways...