Paulus

With your depth of knowledge you deserve that sort of luck

Is that the coin on the home page of your web site Rob?

Just gorgeous Nicholas, can you tell us more about it?

Indeed so, hope you had / are having an enjoyable day!

Especially like that one Jaggy

And one I won just this evening (seller's pic - many of you will guess who from!)

And my recent acquisition from Stu

One of my favourites, more colourfully toned in hand

I blame Clive for not starting one lol

You've set the bar 'pretty' high there!

Maybe my favourite of Rob's posts in this thread

This is a real treat Rob, keep 'em coming! :)

What a drop dead gawjuss reverse!

I just knew Rob would find a way to get his ha'pennies into a silver thread! Great stuff Rob

"Toned 1786 Maundy 3d in EF, the to the right of MAG on the reverse doesn't detract"

Have you been borrowing Dave's dinner plates?

You have some coins left?!!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/221491637784?ru=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fsch%2Fi.html%3F_from%3DR40%26ghostText%3D%26_sacat%3D0%26_nkw%3D221491637784%26_rdc%3D1 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/221491637784?ru=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fsch%2Fi.html%3F_from%3DR40%26ghostText%3D%26_sacat%3D0%26_nkw%3D221491637784%26_rdc%3D1 To be fair, they don't state 'British' EF, and I think they use XF and EF interchangeably in the US, but they are quoting the Britsh EF Spink guide price, and I would say it is intended to mislead. Always surprised at the terminology of the Sheldon scale, a coin that we see as VF can be graded AU 50 over there ...

Nick, I for one massively value your posts and I am sure I am not alone. The political comments belong in the 'Nothing to do with coins' thread, but you know how topics drift! If you do sadly leave then please stay in touch as our collecting areas overlap.

Finally for now, a Christmas present coin that I suspect was sourced from Rob, and an 1821 Crown that often seems to be toned Would love to see all your examples (including yours Rob!)

A Viccy with multiple golden tones on the reverse And one of my favourite coins (much better in hand than the photos show, as they say on eBay)

A couple of early milled I got from Rob:

Revisiting my OP, it has just been my observation that colourful (natural) toning does not appear as common in early milled silver (or hammered for that matter), compared to later milled. I have a colourful toned Anne shilling, but I can barely remember seeing examples for Charles II and James II, while it seems commonplace for Viccy and Eddie 7, and less so for Georges 5 and 6. Am I right, and is there a chemical reason for this? Happily this post has resulted in some collectors posting pics of their toned early milled silver, bring it on, love it! Would be happy is this thread was renamed 'Let's see your toned early milled silver'! (Admins, not seriously!)

I would be interested to know why it is that I have, and have seen, many Victoria and Edward VII in particular, silver coins with significant toning, but there are many silver coins that don't seem to exhibit this to anything like the same degree ... for example pretty much all early milled? Something to do with the silver alloy used I imagine?? Anyone got any 1787 silver that has toning for example?