scottishmoney

When the Queen was younger, and they came out with the first portraits of her in the 1960's on the banknotes, they were attractive, but not really an improvement over the "Helmeted Britannia" on the £5 note from 1956-early 1960's. Face it, unless one were demented, there is not much of an attraction for an 81 year old woman on banknotes. If they must have a monarchist, or perhaps a future one, perhaps Kate Middleton could stand in?

They surely did not wish to tell her about her distant kin, Queen Mary(1689-1694) or Queen Anne(1702-1714), allegations of lesbianism which are still discussed some 300+ years later. The portrait of a monarch on a coin is not a bad thing when the monarch is popular or attractive, but what happens when Charles becomes monarch? He is neither really. That might be time to revive the cypher, or his initials. Say CIII?

Precisely.

Unfortunately politicos everywhere are way out of touch with reality, or what the people want. Your people are close in touch with the fools in the US mint that keep foisting garbage like Presidential dollars and Statehood quarters off, only really creating a seignorage profit for the mint. I am right sick of asking for old silver dollars, ie before 1978 and being proffered that presidential BS. They are the fools that took Miss Liberty off of US coinage and replaced her with images of presidential god corpses to worship as an ideal instead of Liberty. Pretty soon QEII will have her image dumbed down to what the Dutch did to Queen Beatrix, then she will look like a cartoon figure, close to her image on the postal stamps of the UK.

Really what you have to fear, is not the demise of Britannia on the coinage, but rather whence you shall be spending Marianne(€) for your crumpets at Tesco. Then the French will have totally annihilated all British identity.

Yep, my index finger has missed on that last second a couple of times, and my bid was nixed.

I sold an 1862 $10 bill yesterday on eBay, the serious bids came in during the last 20 seconds of the auction. I was glad, because the high bidder for a bit of yesterday was a bidder that registered - yesterday! and had of course zilch feedback. But alas someone that had been something of a pest about getting images of the note, details etc. put a proxy snipe bid in, and blew them all way out of the water. The item had something like 25 bids on it, and about as many watchers. It is kind of exciting to see something double in bid amount in the last seconds, and to have appreciated a 200% return on my investment.

That is not such a bad thing.

Yesterday I sniped a coin with 10 seconds to go, but my best ever was 0 seconds a few years ago. So now I should have a James IV plack coming my way for a mere £6.75. If for some reason my bid wasn't high enough, then I did not want it that bad.

I have several auctions which are closing as I write this, yes, I have noticed several sniper bids. So, I do it myself too. I sniped on an auction for a James IV Plack just awhile ago. I do it manually, never electronically, it is more thrilling that way.

My gawd, they are trying to make her look like:

Going on memory, I think the martlet issue is 1560-1, I used to own of these. Coincidentally I watched Elizabeth I last night, didn't really care for the movie and it's concentration on her affair with the Earl of Essex. I think that was grossly over dramatized. My wife has a 1562 tanner that I gave her when we were engaged. I would definitely like to get a nice portrait coin again, I may have a groat from 1564 somewhere, but I will have to look for it in one of the banks.

Sweet Love those nice natural tones too. The 1770 Halfpenny is my favourite though, an early and hard to find a such nice example of. Isn't the detail in the quarter farthing amazing for such a pecuniary coin? Look at the detail in the Mayflower on the reverse. I have a BU Half Farthing from 1842 that has the Mayflower, Thistle, and Shamrock on, just amazing.

ABBA never goes away, even my teenage daughter listens to old ABBA songs, and to think, they have been around since the 10th century in some form

They have both been cleaned sometime, that detracts from value.

The oldest coin I have gotten in circulation ever was last year, I went through several boxes of 2500 cents each, and found a 1910 cent. But I found several 1918-1919 and 1920's era cents. It has more to do with the Coinstar machines set up in grocery stores where people bring in bags and buckets of accumulated change. But Switzerland is better, it is possible to get coins as early as 1880 in circulation with the rappen minor coins as the composition hasn't changed since then.

The earliest 5¢ coin I have gotten in circulation was a Buffalo nickel from 1920 that I got in a department store about a year ago. But the Shield nickels(Struck to 1883) and the Liberty Nickels (struck up to 1912) are the same composition and weight as the current ones. But the act refers to the denomination, so that even the 1942-1945 nickels that were struck in silver and manganese cannot be melted down, even though they have 80¢ worth of metal(in the government's legislation they still circulate) even though in reality it is rare to get one in circulation now, the last one I saw was last year when I got a very beaten up 1943-S, but the same lot of coins contained a 1982 20p from Great Britain.

Yes, the heavily circulated Scottish shillings have no more than nominal value, not much above face if you can find someone that wants them. But in better grades they are right unusual to find. But what about the older large sized 5p's from before 1992, can those be melted? My guess would be yes, but here in the USA the melting prohibition covers our 5¢ coins issued in cu-ni, technically all the way back to 1867, but in reality I do still get 1939 and 1940 on up nickels in change fairly often. So even those early dates are covered because they still circulate to some extent.

Some of the 1950's era Scottish reverse shillings are worth a hair more than the English, they were usually minted in smaller quantities. Curiously they may have more scrap value(illegal to melt though) than the numismatic value.

Bleeping cheap airlines that don't let a guy haul his money around wi' him. Once I hauled home something like 5000 nickels that I won in a casino in Las Vegas, I only brought them so I could search them for pre-1960 dates.

Most of the silver plated copper forgeries found today were produced during the period of 1810-1820, when coins were in short supply anyway. Often times the Bank of England 18 Pence and Three Shillings coins of 1813 were counterfeited, probably by people thinking the authorities would not prosecute as heartily as if they were coins of the realm.

Where were you when I was buying these things like there was no tomorrow? Now I have bags and bags of them creaking the floor boards and I want to do the same thing you are, sell them.

I do appreciate your conservative approach to it, but it is looking a wee on the XF's side to moi.

Okay, with a bit of a search I found the auction and the images: This piece is NOT eBay material, this is the stuff of Spinks, DNW etc. You will get a far better price and be much happier with the results. Else wise if your not so inclined to sell as an auction item, I am sure there are those in our very midst that would make a right fair offer therein.

Let me add to what I said prior in this discussion topic, this piece, because of the association with William & Mary, the date 1689, etc. might actually have enhanced interest for collectors. Please do go ahead and post an image of the whole coin, I don't think anybody here will have any problems with that(or we will just bonk their heads) 'Tis the whole purpose of the group, to admire and lust after numismatic wonders.