Paulus

I was the lucky winner at £1,950!! Free postage too!!! Particularly delighted as I can't find this coin in any of my reference manuals!

I'm not sure that there are many, this is the most well known catalogue for that era but I expect you already know of it! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stanley-Gibbons-Britain-Specialised-Catalogues/dp/0852598165/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366580592&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=Collectors%27+Stamps%3A+Queen+Victoria+and+Edward+VII+1837-1910+by+R.J.+Marles

And if you ask him nicely you might get a signed copy!

Not without a link, thank you. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/A-QUALITY-GEORGE-III-CARTWHEEL-1797-TWOPENCE-2d-HUGE-2-oz-COIN-/290892253787?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEWAX%3AIT&nma=true&si=Amvy0IS812cJT3KC5UUZcvu%252Bz68%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc Was it you who won it? It's a nice mid-grade example - some wear, not too much, good rim. Worth the price it went for, I'd say. Only blemish is that 9 but that's not really bad. Yes I won it! Cheers I've always wanted a nice example, one of my favorite coins! Mine too (It's not that blotchy in-hand, but you know how scans are. And it's been enlarged double size in Photoshop which doesn't do it any favours either.) They are great coins, though I like the penny even better! Ironically, in view of the CGS debate, the nicest one I've ever had I got slabbed, and then felt somehow detached from it, so ultimately let it go! I don't currently have a nice example myself, more is the shame! That is a very good point Stuart, and one of the factors in my CGS Trial ... I hardly ever look at my few slabbed coins because they are not with the others, and I am starting to lose touch with them ... increasingly I won't care if I sell them, which I never would have believed pre-slabbing!!

Would certainly up their SEO if they haven't copied and pasted it from an Encyclopedia, that is! I might list a 1966 penny with a description like that, just for the email responses from bemused collectors worldwide! "This 1967 penny is the finest we've ever seen - and we've seen many! Almost full iridescent lustre, this coin is virtually in the state it left the Mint in 1969. (Yes, note the historical drama - despite carrying the date 1967, this penny was actually minted in 1969 due to the quirky law passed by Great Britain's Chancellor, Jim Callaghan. This minting of a coin bearing the incorrect date was unprecedented since.. the year before). The generous size of these old pennies puts today's hastily struck minor coins into perspective. Remember - a 1967 penny is the last of its kind, redolent of that lost era between February and August 1971 when - already doomed - it and its peers could be seen gasping out the last weeks of their existence. This particular specimen is 100% guaranteed genuine, having been taken from a receipted Mint Sealed Bag which lay forgotten in the cellar of a 1960s coin dealer who went out of business in 1972. All the other specimens in the bag were damaged by environmental factors, but this miracle specimen emerged virtually unscathed and we offer it - slabbed and annotated - as an artefact of a lost age of coin collecting." I think I will list one Peck with your exact wording, just for the craic! (with your permission!)

For anyone interested, I had already stated (in the other CGS topic) that I have submitted a batch of coins to be authenticated, graded and slabbed by CGS. I will also be selling most of them (I haven't decided what selling method yet) and I think I will be able to gauge the level of interest and prices I realise compared to raw coins I have been selling over the last year, admittedly only on eBay. There are 8 coins submitted on 7/2 - so they are already over the 30 day milestone - but they are all at the 'Finalising Grade' stage. I will post the CGS pics here and invite and welcome any comments, opinions as to grade, etc, and we will see what CGS have to say about them by way of comparison, hopefully in a few days' time. Here are the first 2, I will post the rest during the course of this evening. #1 CGS UIN 25574:

Even rejected coins have UIN I think. All coins were initially allocated UIN prior to grading and the UIN of rejected coins can't really be recyled without causing problems. Is it possible that many of the staff at CGS might also be employed by London Coins? If so, some are simply earning a bit of extra money "on the side" when they have time. Since there is hardly any extra overhead as CGS is using same premises as London Coins, they can keep going even with a small turnover. I don't believe that they spend the same amount of time grading each coin. For example, they are graded over 1000 QE sovereigns. If the grading doesn't affect value, then why put in the effort? Yes Nick, you're right about rejected coins having a UIN, I have just checked mine. I don't know whether any of the graders also work for London Coins, but if they do it could explain how the finances could be made to work, but also introduces more potential for conflict of interest! I think it would be appalling if they don't spend the same care/time grading QE sovereigns (for example) - someone has paid £20 quid a pop and should expect the same service IMO.

Duplicate Post

VS - I will take a stab at just VF50 despite the weak strike, grading should be no different for a rare year, just the value will be a lot higher - could be way out though!

Well - I didn't ask that specific question but have just done a few minutes' analysis based on a few (probably dubious) assumptions. They have been grading/slabbing for just over 7 years (according to the grader, I thought it was longer and are currently up to UIN 26422. That gives an average of around 50 per week, but won't include rejected coins or those slabbed for encapsulation only. In the last 2 months they have 'numbered' a total of 850 coins, giving an average of 75 per week, let's round it up to 100 for ease to allow for rejects etc. So that is 20 per day. I understand that there are 3 graders, each taking around 10 minutes on that part of the process, plus the coin needs photographing, slabbing, posting etc, so let's say 1 hour per coin - so that's 20 man hours per day on average. Let's say average revenue is £20 per coin (ignoring all postage and packing which I will assume is 'at cost') - this gives a total revenue of just over £500k for all coins over the 7 + years. Clearly they can't afford to employ 3 people full-time on a gross revenue of £70k per year, when there are all the overheads as well. So one theory must be that delays in the production line are due to waiting for part-time staff to carry out the next stage in processing a coin - it still needs 20 man-hours per day though at current demand, if my assumptions aren't way off! Doesn't really add up does it? I don't know why they charge double for more valuable coins, I assumed it was mainly because of the quicker turn-around service that the higher rate delivers - but that seems to be going. The grading should be just as strict and thorough for coins up to £200 in value, so what is the value proposition in their pricing structure now? And I agree, 3 months is WAY too long for a collector, let alone a dealer. And what would happen if the went bust while they had some of your coins, anyone know? Would we be treated like a 'preferential creditor', is there any danger the coins could be treated as there assets?

Glendinings sale on Wed October 30th 1974 sold one, lot 356 graded as "practically mint state" and sold for 1500 quid hammer Mmm, sounds good now, but back then I bought my first house for £6000, so £1500 was quite a price. £1500 in 1974, that's probably around £40,000 now so it wasn't much of an investment According to an inflation calculator website, it's actually just over £15k in today's terms!

Far too worn for my liking!

Thanks Rob!

Surely you at least wore a pair of cotton gloves? Nope!!!!! But I must say I was a lot more careful to only handle by the edges than they were!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Edit: Ooops, now I've said it!! I suppose the thrill of handling such gorgeous coins made you impervious to the cold, then Indeed, the requirement to view their coins while stark bollock-naked was a surprise at first, but after the brief initiation ceremony I am now totally converted!

Surely you at least wore a pair of cotton gloves? Nope!!!!! But I must say I was a lot more careful to only handle by the edges than they were!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Edit: Ooops, now I've said it!!

Yes, but .. what? If a coin was struck in 1640 and handed straight to someone who put it in a box, it's clearly uncirculated. Same as if Bolton handed a halfpenny to someone in 1797 or a mint employee pocketed 20p tomorrow, the amount of wear those coins have been subject to is zero. So ... why aren't they the same grade? As for using proofs for benchmarks, well that suggests to me that the grading is less about wear and more about how well a coin measures up against an idea. The idea of what a 'perfect' coin will look like. Seems to me to be a bit of arbitrariness here ... which brings me back to .. why do we grade coins? If it's a measure of 'perfection', well, OK. Though there are problems with that, I can accept the concept. But if it's to do with wear, why are we using different grade ceilings just because a coin is older? Yeah, I know. Not strictly about CGS is it? But I'm curious now what people think. What you say is perfectly true. I wonder if it's something to do with the fact that minting imperfections were almost inherent pre-Boulton & Watt? Or maybe it's more to do with the fact that people didn't tend to put coins aside in those days, as they were valuable things as money and only kings collected coins numismatically? It's certainly true that there are ARE early milled UNC coins, and I would grade my 1708 shilling as virtually that, also my 1697 sixpence. Both are quite common in those grades, so maybe there was a bag stashed away in a bank that didn't come to light for a couple of centuries. ETA: even in the early 20th Century, collectors weren't obsessive about high grades, as long as they could see the "fine detail" they were happy enough apparently. I really don't know, I must say it surprised me, after all proofs are not a grade anyway. But they had many benchmark proofs, and many with various types and varying degrees of wear and imperfections, of many types, monarchs, dates and denominations, against which to compare submitted coins, and that did impress me ... their benchmark collection, which I imagine they own (along with London Coins!), must be amongst the finest to be found outside of museums

Or you might be taken by this pretty 1729 Halfpenny copper proof with no stop (Peck 835): The great thing was, I was allowed to handle these coins at my leisure, in the raw (ironically!)

I asked if the benchmark coins CGS use constitute part of the population report, and was assured that they do ... which means that we can look at them on line! However, they are not tagged as to whether they are benchmark coins are not, which might be a nice idea -- Bill? This is typical of one of the rare proof coins I was shown, but I don't know whether this particular one is a benchmark coin. It is a 1718 silver proof farthing struck on a thin flan (Peck 790), and graded CGS 92: I felt a bit privileged to be handling some of these coins, perhaps for the first and ony time, and needless to say, I wish I was posting in the 'Coin Acquisition of the Week' section!

As I understand it, different grading strictness for different periods (hammered/early milled/milled/late milled) and even years and types is accommodated by CGS having many sets of benchmark coins. I was shown many of these coins but I don't know how many they have in total (certainly not every year/type/monarch/denomination) but the total value of the coins I was shown certainly runs into 100s of £ks) - probably more than their total revenue to date! There were many very rare early milled proofs among the benchmark coins. Obviously, as at least 2 people have highlighted on here, whoever graded the benchmark coins, and how they graded them in the first place, will be one of the keys here!

Personally I find the term 'uncirculated' misleading and unhelpful as a grade. The only way of knowing for sure whether a coin has ever been circulated is if it is still in its original Royal Mint packaging, or if the owner has owned it since it left the Mint or has provenance back to the time that it did. In most cases UNC is used to mean 'Mint State' and I prefer MS over UNC as a grading term.

yes indeed.....a nice coin is a nice coin all the same, regardless of whether someones given it a score out of 100. Ski I agree totally, they have just perpetuated the confusion! Remove all cross-references to VF/Ef/AU etc and the Sheldon Scale, and maybe the CGS percentage scale will gain more credibility

Yes, it's a bit strange that they think that a CGS score of 60/100 could equate to a Sheldon score of 60/70!

Don't think so, despite the absence of the greedy old King of Spain on the obverse the legend reads Philip and Mary, there's proberly a story about why he was removed if anyone knows it? Love that sort of stuff!

The reverse pic is in the main description section, do you want bigger/better pics of it? What die pairing is it? I can't seem to find any daylight bulbs that fit my desk lamps, I am using 2 cheap Ikea desk lamps (your suggestion!) with halogen bulbs - so yes to the offer of the spare bulbs! - but the fittings are the 'small Edsion' screw types (is that what they are called?) and the local wholesale leccy shop does have any daylight bulbs for that fitting in its (extensive) catalogue. I am just getting to know the camera, it has all sorts of WB settings, I am currently using one called 'K' - whatever that means! A lot better than no WB, then my silver collection comes out more like gold, but much room for improvement! The bulbs I have are screw fit, the larger screw size, will measure tomorrow, all your's if they fit! I think the reverse liz image is a duplicate of your P&M coin? I think I will buy some different desk lamps if not, they are dead cheap and it sounds like daylight bulbs are the way to go! And what a pillock I am, I was listing while multi-tasking, always a mistake! Think I will have to get my eBay listings checked by you lot first in future! And despite the incorrect reverse being pictured, I already had a bid, so couldn't edit the description! I have added the correct reverse on now, so feast your eyes on the incredibly rare die pairing I know you are hoping for! PS I can do some more unique die pairings for you remarkably easily! But I think it would be hard to beat pairing Liz with Mary and Philip, the 3 of them all loved each other sooooo much! Thanks for pointing out my schoolboy error