Red Riley

He is on record as saying he wants to be George VII which is one of his names apparently. Honestly, he's got as many names as the Very Silly candidate in Monty Python's election.

I don't mind referenda on any subject but I would like that everybody who intends to vote take an exam on the subject first just to make sure they know what they're talking about. Could be some surprises there... And whilst talking about unelected bodies, can I have a vote on who becomes our next head of state?

The 50 degrees is the good bit. The rest is howling gales and sheets of rain. You wouldn't like it Bob, you really wouldn't.

Personal message shortly.

Hi Chris, I've got loads of photos. Better to tell me what you haven't got and I'll see if I've got an image.

This is the rather unclear detail from one that I had a year or two back. I have been advised by people that should know, that these should now be bought with extreme caution as they are way more common than was originally thought.

Many of us can say that which is why the whole subject has to be treated with sensitivity and just trotting out a hackneyed old image devalues their memory. For the record my father's uncle was killed in France during 1915 and is now buried in Étaples Military Cemetry and my mother's uncle was gassed at the Second Battle of Ypres. Captued by the Germans he was re-patriated via Switzerland as no longer a military threat. He lived until 1950, a broken man in chronic pain. In one way though the world has moved on. My wife is part German and my kids have relatives on both sets of war memorials. I guess this isn't unusual. We should be commemorating all those who died in this senseless war not just those who came exclusively from one part of Europe or another.

I have to say the Kitchener poster just reminds me of nothing more than Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and with Kitchener's reputation having been put through the wringer since, I just wonder whether the people who choose these designs have any sense of history, or any sense period. Surely what we should be commemorating is the waste, the utter futility of it all. This is just gymcrack nonsense and an insult to all those who were betrayed by its patriotic appeal and ended up gassed, maimed and shellshocked on the Western Front.

You could try rubbing the signature off with an ink eraser but as a 'cleaned' example it would surely lose value.

I may be wrong here, but isn't the main difference between the 1874-9 narrow/wide dates and those of the old head series that the former is a separate master die and the latter random modifications of the working die. As a result, the former will be as uniform as any other date and the latter will cover a wide spectrum due to the fact that at this point in history, the working die modification was done at a very low level e.g. a first year apprentice. I had hoped to come up with a really useful rule of thumb based on master die v. working die varieties but it really won't wash as overdates seem to be working die based and nobody is suggesting that they shouldn't be included. So hey, whatever takes your fancy I guess.

Top-notch Christmas and a duper New Year to you all!

Just picked up on this thread and it doesn't surprise me that so many of us are amateur genealogists - it's the history thing and it's actually fun to associate coin dates with dates of ancestors etc. One particular branch of the family I have been gnawing away at for 20 years and am finally just about there; I've had to cope with two successive illegitimate generations, my great grandmother and her mother who both changed their names (both first names and surnames) like other people change their socks, people who just disappear and a great great grandfather who was permanently banged up for debt despite moving in some fairly rarified circles. My tree is now on Wikitree (http://www.wikitree.com/) where the thousand or so individuals mentioned can be used by others where our trees cross. Of the proprietory sites, I prefer Find My Past as it has a census address search facility which can be really useful at times. Oh, and finally don't expect any of the genealogy companies' indexes to be that accurate as they were largely transcribed by people whose first language was other than English and some truly jaw-dropping typos can occur. Best of luck!

I've probably mentioned this before but my Dad worked in shops from about 1937 on and perhaps before that as a Saturday boy. He did however remember the occasional crown being spent but whether these were Victorian or 20th century commemoratives I don't know. They clearly didn't circulate much though as the superstition was that whenever a crown was spent somebody was in for the sack i.e. too many crowns = a high turn over of staff!

Gladstone really was a boring old fart. The best comparison of the two men I have seen (by Robert Blake I believe) is that Gladstone's personality and beliefs would have prevented him being a top statesman at any time other than the Victorian era whereas Disraeli would have succeeded in any place and at any time. He was a consumate politician with an unerring knack of knowing whichway the wind was blowing.

He never actually said it, the quote comes from his novel 'Sybil (Or The Two Nations)'. At the time he was writing pot-boilers to pay off his mountain of debt. I suppose that where credit is due, is that in his second administration, even if he didn't have much of a social conscience, he did allow others to exercise theirs. To see his genius, look to foreign affairs.

Think I got the wrong error edge in my earlier post. Worth nothing like what I said, perhaps not much more than the standard issue. V for A or bar blocks up on die is common to many coins.

Certainly mentioned in Collector's Coins where Chris describes it as the 'hip hop error'!

I think it was Jeremy Clarkson who commented on the lack of romance in the German language particularly its description of nipples as 'breast warts'!

Thanks Nick. If I've got it, this post should come up with just your last post in the box. Yay!

On the other hand, there was Disraeli... if he were alive today, would he find a natural home in today's Tory Party? Now there's a subject for debate, if you like Unfortunately he would. I suppose I'm a bit of an expert on Disraeli as I give talks on him at Hughenden (or I would do if I hadn't lost my notes...). He was much more of a Tony Blair than a Clement Attlee or even a Margaret Thatcher. Most of the social legislation passed between 1874 and 1880 was the idea of various other members of his government. Attaining power was his forte, not what to do with it once he'd got it and his expansion of the electorate in 1868 much more about his desire to cut the ground from under the Liberals than any egalitarian principles he may have held. That Thatcher was a great admirer says more about her inability to understand people than any noble convictions he may have held. He was capable of making the right choice, like when he was able to use his undoubted talent for persuasion to avert wars (e.g. the Congress of Berlin) but if we endow him with too much of a social conscience, we are sadly mistaken. N.B. How do I post on here without repeating anything anybody has ever said on the subject? My attempts to prune it down to Pecks last comment has just left a load of empty boxes. Computers? Tsk.

Please don't ask that question, wars have been started over less! From my point of view, and there are many other arguments, it commoditizes coins to the benefit of investors and the detriment of collectors who on the whole, are more interested in the history and less in the investment potential.

Although I'm not in any way Scottish, I would love to see Scotland go their own way if only to see the unintended consequences on the rest of the (dis)United Kingdom. What would happen to the union jack? Would England get its own national anthem instead of that awful dirge we have to mouth now? Since most of them are of Scottish descent, who would the Ulster unionists want to be united with? And since they're as popular as rabies in a guide dogs' home north of the border, how long after independence would it be before Scotland kicked out the Windsor dynasty? Looks like it would all be great fun. Don't see it happening unfortunately.

Hi Tony and welcome to the forum, Heritage are an American auction house where a lot of the high end stuff goes these days. Rayner quotes the 1818 error edge as R5 which means 5 to 10 examples known. Even if this is an underestimate which is quite likely, there aren't many out there. You will learn by reading this board that a lot of British collectors are implacably opposed to the third party graders and as a result it will take many years for any meaningful statistics to be built up on such a rare coin, if it happens at all. As you have discovered, in these circumstances 'finest known' means very little. As for value, who knows? £5k, £10k, £15k? More? Less? Any auction house would undoubtedly set a very wide estimate and just wait and see how many people are interested on the day.

Yes indeedy, have a good one. Morrisey's not so happy though; http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/29/morrissey-attacks-us-obama-thanksgiving . Apparently he learnt about international diplomacy from Dave.

Sorry Rob, but very nearly... it turns out I've got every one from 130.