Paddy

Be careful you check with the right city mint. Paris mint 1786 is very scarce and valuable. Orleans is much more common.

Interesting. Here is my 1906, which I have no reason to doubt, and there seems to be a slight offset:

I am not sure. I have just been looking at all my Ed VII halfcrowns, and all bar 1910 have the orb very slightly offset to the right. I am more concerned by the irregularity of the "SOI QUI", but that could be PMD or poor focus.

I think this is one too. This one in Hong Kong and taken in 1986. The building is the Officer's mess of the Queens Gurkha Engineers - I suspect long since demolished by the new Chinese regime.

Welcome @Mark Acton-Smith to the forum. The 1971 two pence is one of the commonest coins ever produced. Nearly 1.5 billion were made as part of the decimalization process, so despite the rumour mill on Ebay and some social media sites, it is worth just the 2p face value. The only proviso is that the scrap value of copper is quite high, so in bulk they may be worth more in metal content, but you have to find a scrap metal merchant interested in processing them. Also, it may still be illegal! Sorry if that is a disappointment!

There are advantages to having good old-fashioned reference books!

The R beneath the wreath makes it Orleans mint. The creature beneath the bust is described as a "Greyhound running left" though it looks far more like a dragon to me! Indicates Mathieu-Pierre Combret as the moneyer, 1780 to 1788.

For those that had not spotted it before (like me), there is now an option to contribute to the running of this forum. On the main forum page, down the right hand side, if you click on the amount raised so far, underneath "Current Donation Goals", you can make a donation. All you require is a Paypal account - and funds of course!

Not my area, as you know by now, but the ISTO must be Bristol mint? Not listed as substantially scarcer than any others. From the Spink book, I think that means it must be one of the Class 2 or 3 variations.

In case you come across anymore of these, the date is in Roman Numerals just behind Victoria's shoulder. You can just make out the lxxi at the end and can assume the rest. Worth knowing how to date them as some dates are much scarcer and more valuable than others.

Agreed. 1924 is not a scarce date and I have scrapped much better coins than that before now.

Well done on your sorting! I hope you didn't give away the Crown Jewels to the charity shop! The Gothic Florins are a lovely design. Yours is pretty well worn, but you can still just make out the date as 1871. A nice souvenir.

The portrait does look like Vespasian, but Titus and Domitian are very similar. The reverse is an Altar, and according to my books that makes Domitian more likely. With so much damage, it is difficult to be sure. Most likely minted in Rome but for use across the whole empire, including Britannia. The closest match I have spotted is S2676 which was minted with Domitian as Caesar under Vespasian and would therefore date 69 to 79 AD. (But I stand to be corrected!) Does appear to be silver. The mass devaluation of coinage and the use of progressively less and less silver had not started in the first century.

I am seeing lots of 2025 £1 coins, so they are not scarce, and the 2023s are around too. Not seen a 2024 yet at all. A fellow collector was telling me the 2022 £1 is quite scarce and fetching £5+ on Ebay, but I have had several???

Those books are interesting but only really scratch the surface. They are more for general interest than reference. For GB pre-decimal coins you really need "Coins of England and the United Kingdom", which comes out each year. (No need to get every year as most of the detail remains fairly static.) Here it is on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coins-England-United-Kingdom-2025/dp/1917269005/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1BP3BH96G6F8E&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.n4edWGlfb0yBRNDiHCBke5TXqasrBgeyFMD1Mxlg1X5FyKMNS5_w0cPGFQTteufUMLUWKZQ7NLwDhuQMSDq7W3yvSt0Vdhzl0QEvg4PFWCnEE7LZYMHuEVoJFPhxn7PS9HyQwSy6F_D1wm6gvN3uLAtRISHccMe9iyK-1czDV-RR0j-8iokTk-Q6lfvgwfyEQbJh_tgEGJ57pCTeIEBxnpMKzvtXBQPNSFJcrPZj5ek.RLeA8d0awh9bFG9pAjuAGOTGTPi2U6cRY13R1oddGLw&dib_tag=se&keywords=spink+coins+of+england+2025&qid=1761917519&s=books&sprefix=coins+%2Cstripbooks%2C218&sr=1-1 For World coins, the main reference books are the Krause World Coins series, but these are telephone directory tomes, one for each century, and I am not sure if they are even still printed. Best is to use the online website https://en.numista.com/ unless you need to get very specialised.

To add more - the 1900 Crown is quite common and not rare. On the edge you will see the words ANNO REGNI followed by Roman numerals - for 1900 these will be either LXIII or LXIV for the 63rd or 64th year of her reign. They are of equal scarcity but interesting. In that condition probably £40 to £50 in the current market. The Florin 1887 is the most common year for Jubilee head florins as it was the first year of this design and a great many were put aside. Condition is better but probably £20 to £25. The shilling 1897 is probably the nicest coin and the most collectable grade - the same value as the florin. All in my humble opinion - others may say different.

I am not good on all the detail, but seems to be Henry VI Groat minted in Calais. I leave the precise variety to others! The middle circle on the reverse reads "VILLA CALISIE" which is Calais.

As a tip on getting surgical Acetone - chemists sell it but at very high price for very small quantities. You can order it online for a small fraction of the money.

Me too! I am not sure what level I should qualify for, but "newbie" sounds a bit naff.

I am looking forward to seeing these!

Yes, the Dutch one is for "Knight Commander of the Orange Nassau with Swords", which he got for his work rebuilding the dikes in the Netherlands after the war. (He was an officer in the Royal Engineers.) Have you spotted the mismatch? The TD medal in the miniatures is the correct one I believe, the TE is a replacement as the TD got lost somewhere along the line.

Ok - as a try and for want of anything else to post, a picture of my Grandfather's WW2 medals: Yes! Worked fine.

I'll try this one as a test: Prussia 5 Mark picked fairly cheaply at a local auction a few weeks back. I like the foreign Crown size coins, and they often seem quite cheap. ... and the result - FAILED on the initial try after dragging and dropping the image. Message was something like "Predecimal coins can't handle your request". I then deleted the image from the body of the message but left it in the attachments, and this then worked fine. Interestingly after dragging and dropping there was an alert about "Rich Text", which was not there pre-upgrade for this operation, but often cause issues before when quoting text...

Well it is certainly back up - well done! It looks substantially as before and the only oddity I have noticed is a congratulatory notification that I have completed one whole year! 🙂

I am in the South West, so a bit too far away to offer direct help. Maybe someone else on here will volunteer. As a starting point, the bullion value of your sovereigns is around £727 each at the moment. If they are in particularly good condition or a rare date, they may make more. If you sell them, most dealers would want to pay less than that as they can only sell them to collectors at bullion most of the time, and they need to leave a margin. (Many Jewellers are particularly tight, usually offering only half bullion value!) Maybe the "Yorkshire Auction House" featured on the TV might help? They have a resident coin expert. On the gradings you have got, bear in mind that "Good" in coin terms is almost derogatory. Collectors for modern coins will mostly only start at Very Fine or better. P