Gary1000

We were copying across all the data on our working drive overnight to a new drive. This pushed the old drive over the edge so we now have nothing and I've nothing to do so here's some light entertainment. A traveling salesman visits a small town in the Midwest and sees a circus banner reading: "Don't Miss The Amazing Scotsman." Curious, he buys a ticket. The tent goes dark. Suddenly, trumpets blare and all eyes turn to the center ring. There, spot lit in the center ring is a table with three walnuts on it. Standing next to it is an old Scotsman. Suddenly the old man lifts his kilt, whips out a huge penis and smashes all three walnuts with three mighty swings! The crowd erupts in applause as the elderly Scot is carried off on the shoulders of the crowd. Ten years later the salesman visits the same little town and he sees a faded sign for the same circus and the same: "Don't Miss the Amazing Scotsman." He can't believe the old guy is still alive much less still doing his act! So he buys a ticket. Again, the center ring is illuminated. This time, instead of walnuts, three coconuts are placed on the table. The Scotsman stands before them, then suddenly lifts his kilt and smashes the coconuts with three swings of his amazing member. The crowd goes wild! Flabbergasted, the salesman requests a meeting with him after the show. "You're incredible," he tells the Scotsman. "But I have to know something. You're older now, why switch from walnuts to coconuts?" Well, says the Scot: "Me eyes are nae whit they used to be."

There's very few 1970s cars that DOESN'T apply to! Datsuns and Italian cars arguably worse than even British. My 2nd car, in 1981, was a 70s Alfasud. The Alfa's and Lancia's of the time were total rust buckets. My 3rd car was an old 1968 Porsche 911, very solid and well rust-proofed. No room in the back, but I didn't have kids then! I currently have an Italian car, but that's mainly aluminium bodied I had a 944, so back seats of a sort. We've got a Smart now so no room for the 18 year old in the back of that either. Mind you it's hard enough to get him to sit in the front as well.

Thats a great business strategy by London Coins I must say...."We have a lot of business on the go so lets leave the phone off the hook so that we dont get any more..."....God forbid that any new clients get through to us whilst we're busy doing admin... You could always get them slabbed by CGS and sell them that way! I noticed Jill lockett selling a slabbed Halfpenny recently on ebay and it went for less than the slabbing cost.

Pray tell, I have a fake 1905 half crown and wish I knew what points it out as a fake. From what I gleaned on this very forum, there's a small break in the R of EDWARDVS that is the prime giveaway on many of them. But there may be other flaws on those from other sources? Are you certain that this only appears on fakes? I have seen more 1905 halfcrowns with the defect on the R of EDWARDVS, than without. The EF example in the Andrew Scothern collection (being auctioned by DNW later this month) also has the defect. The only giveaway of fakes that I'm aware of is the wonky I of QVI on the reverse. As I say, I only heard about this on this forum, and only in connection with fakes. There may well be genuine examples with the same defect, but I hadn't heard of them here! I pointed out on here some time ago the broken R but it was pooh poohed at the time. My fake is 0.900 silver so not quite sterling. It's got the wonky I. Thanks, Gary! Where did you get the .900 analysis from? Was it cheap? I bought it as such from London Coins

I just sold a 1953 proof set through Baldwins, they seemed very professional.

Pray tell, I have a fake 1905 half crown and wish I knew what points it out as a fake.

They do it to try and make sure that their listing appears first in the list because the default sort criterion is price. Are you sure? If I don't set anything, the default they select is "Soonest ending" Yes. If I type eg "1965 sixpence" into the "Search..." field at the top of the "My eBay" page - it returns a list of items sorted by "Price:highest first" How odd, I always get 'Best Match'! Just tried the same in different browsers: in Firefox I get Best Match; in Chrome I get Price:highest first. Weird. I always assumed it was "Best match". I use firefox.

Bought on ebay 29/03/13 for £761 and sold less than a month later for close to £500 profit, not a bad couple of days work I suppose!!!! I see the serious bidders dropped out at £191. I guess it will be on again nextweek.

Bought on ebay 29/03/13 for £761 and sold less than a month later for close to £500 profit, not a bad couple of days work I suppose!!!! I see the serious bidders dropped out at £191. I guess it will be on again nextweek.

I am similarly aflicted but have not tried that combination for many years. I had noticed that even a relatively small amount of booze makes me feel tom dick, I put it down the the Metaformin.

So do you have all three in currecy as well? Yes, with multiple examples of most for sale in UNC. The 2 commoner proofs are already there as well of course. Yes I realised that it was a bumb question just after I hit the post button. I picked up my unlisted proof as a single 4-5 years ago from a seller in Greece of all places.

So do you have all three in currecy as well?

Some companies offer 75% Spinks so I guesss it comes down to you to prove the grade of the lost coins. I think I need to think seriously about photographing my collection. I think the company I'm with offer 100% Spinks. If they use Spinks as their benchmark where does CGS come into it.

Yes that is a big problem. If the micro variety is rare enough so that its value goes above the threshold where you have to give an individual valuation its no longer a problem. We need Spinks to take more notice of micro varieties otherwise we're screwed.

happy nights Now wasn't that a missed opportunity. When I was about 15 I went out with a girl who would always brought her best friend......... What was his name? Paul.....ine Yes Silvia and Pauline, interesting times. That was my first introduction to coin collecting, started with a run of thrupenny bits.

There might be quite a bun-fight if one ever appears listed as such. They must be pretty darn rare, your VF is the only one that I've ever heard of. It's the only one I've ever come across as well, it actually came from Davies himself.

You'll have run into the same problems that a lot of people face trying to get G6 as well. And that is the major Auction houses don't bother with them accept in bulk lots (so you have to be there, really), and eBay is useless for such things because, forgetting the fact the images are never good enough to decipher an EF from an UNC (at best), the postage generally makes buying them at book price a prohibitive thing, unless you are going to buy a number of coins from the same ebayer (and good luck with that). The only way, is to buy a number of coins from the same dealer [to save on post], or attend a coin fair (and turn a blind eye to fuel costs). There's no easy answer, unfortunately, as it's not like say a Victorian coin, where a rubbish image on eBay can have you speculate a VF bid, whilst you're suspecting the coin might be VF and better. With E2 & G6, if an EF arrives, when you were hoping for an UNC, you've thrown your money away, as you will never be able to sell it on and get your money back. Here's where you've just got to have a dealer who's judgement in grading you 100% trust! Nothing else will do! I was lucky and picked up a date run in UNC. They are not easy to find in high grades because dealer haven't really caught on to E11 yet. I actually managed last week to upgrade my 1955 F to gap after looking for a year or two. Do you mean F to bead? F to gap is much the easier of the two for that date. Sorry your correct. I had also upgraded my to gap recently from about GEF but that was more from not looking. My F to bead was only about EF. Just leaves the 1965 Davies 2503 which I have in VF.

Did you pay lots of money for this coin by any chance beings you are happy to ignore the many years of experience on this forum.

You'll have run into the same problems that a lot of people face trying to get G6 as well. And that is the major Auction houses don't bother with them accept in bulk lots (so you have to be there, really), and eBay is useless for such things because, forgetting the fact the images are never good enough to decipher an EF from an UNC (at best), the postage generally makes buying them at book price a prohibitive thing, unless you are going to buy a number of coins from the same ebayer (and good luck with that). The only way, is to buy a number of coins from the same dealer [to save on post], or attend a coin fair (and turn a blind eye to fuel costs). There's no easy answer, unfortunately, as it's not like say a Victorian coin, where a rubbish image on eBay can have you speculate a VF bid, whilst you're suspecting the coin might be VF and better. With E2 & G6, if an EF arrives, when you were hoping for an UNC, you've thrown your money away, as you will never be able to sell it on and get your money back. Here's where you've just got to have a dealer who's judgement in grading you 100% trust! Nothing else will do! I was lucky and picked up a date run in UNC. They are not easy to find in high grades because dealer haven't really caught on to E11 yet. I actually managed last week to upgrade my 1955 F to gap after looking for a year or two.

Your link talks largely about weak strikes, your coin is showing post mint damage whatever the cause.

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 On Tony Claytons website the 1798 is valued at £18,000 in UNC! The point I was trying to make is that you would have been better off putting the money into a house. If in 1974 a house was £6000 so £1500 would be 1/4 of a house. Now in 2013 the average value of a house is about £160,000 so 1/4 would be £40,000 making £18,000 look like a pretty poor investment. I should have said in my area, the UK average is nearer £240k so that an even poorer investment

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 On Tony Claytons website the 1798 is valued at £18,000 in UNC! The point I was trying to make is that you would have been better off putting the money into a house. If in 1974 a house was £6000 so £1500 would be 1/4 of a house. Now in 2013 the average value of a house is about £160,000 so 1/4 would be £40,000 making £18,000 look like a pretty poor investment.

Ah but it's still different, because whilst it may have been rare it was still a possibility. For example in 1992 I saw a 1930s George V florin in circulation. So even though it was rare and only happened once in all those years, it did happen. The lady who worked at the local post office kept it. See that's not even a possibility now not with legal tender anyhow. The only thing you can get these days is predecimals used deceptively, such as farthings, halfpennies and shillings as 1p, 2p and 10p coins respectively, although that's seldom now. I remember it used to happen more frequently in the early 1990s. I can't remember the last time I got a predecimal in change (which I'd love to happen), or even an old 5p. I was relating more to the collector of today collecting the coins of today. No one would expect to be able to pull pre-decimal from there change. And when I started collecting the chances of pulling a Victorian coin from your change had about as much chance as your 1930s florin. 90% of the coins were GVI upwards

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! Are but a quarter of a house is about £40,000

I think I didn't make my point very clear, what I meant was not that coins would be melted and thus unavailable for collectors to buy, collectors will always be able to buy decimal coins due to the huge mintages. What I meant was that they'd be nothing of great interest actually circulating (or say scarce circulating), say for you to hunt down and find in change. With this I very much agree with Tom, we have nothing compared to the US and Switzerland where you can pull coins 100+ years out of circulation (by that I mean coins that are circulating as legal tender as they were meant to). How many collectors on here collect coins from change? Probably less than buy coins I suspect. Collecting coins through buying and collecting coins through change are two completely different experiences, at least for me anyhow. It's a bit like going to an auction/antiques house vs going metal detecting. One you know you're going to get something decent, the other you might find nothing. It's the thrill of the chase. British coins just don't have that, and for us folks born in the decimal era, we've never really had the chance to enjoy that. Personally I'd love to go to Switzerland and spend many hours searching through change, that'd be cool. Actually the most fun I've had buying coins is searching through the junk boxes, that's fantastic, love it. Which probably surprises Chris considering the kinds of coins I have specialised in over the years. The hyperactive Royal Mint issuing of proofs and commems has also had a knock-on effect in killing people's interest in collecting from change - why bother if you can buy a perfect set every year? I did start collecting from change about a couple of years before decimalisation. I don't think the mix available was much different to now, ok you could find the very occassional pre-George VI but it was rare. Most of that kind of thing came from grandparents etc.