Red Riley

The whole point is though Dave, that no coin, particularly in the higher grades, is ever an exact grade. If the UNC (100% lustre) figure is quoted as £100 and EF as £50, the theory is that everything EF to UNC will fit somewhere between the two and let's face it there is plenty of leeway. Sometimes an EF with lustre will fetch more than an AU without; that's just the way the cookie crumbles and shows that you should never give an undue amount of credence to Spink's or any other price guide without a pinch, or even a handful of Siberia's finest.

Oh come on! Haven't you heard of the '1914 missing toenail' or '1917 cauliflower ear'? Clearly you've not been paying attention.

Aah...! Perl? MySQL?

I have a website but not the foggiest idea what PHP is...

You can use anything on my site. Quite a few pennies (e.g. 8 different varieties of 1874), and varieties under florins, sixpences and farthings. I may also still have the photographs/descriptions of coins already sold, so will have a look through the darkest recesses of my PC.

I frequently find that I don't notice the verdigris until the coin has been photographed, and that is simply because the act of correcting the colour (toned copper/bronze is a nightmare to photograph) makes even the slightest speck of verdigris stand out bright green. At that point I have to do something about it...

Ouch! I have never seen one of these or seen one offered for sale. If I did see one then I would expect it to be in a worse condition than that one. Very nice find and free at that! Freeman states the rarity at R18 (6-15 known) this could be the 16th so you have dropped the rating to R17 Who knows what that could bring at auction!! The Verdigris seems to be superficial (still soft) and should be easy to remove, carefully but I would have to disagree with with Vickysilver about using copper coin agents on this coin due to it rarity! Personally I would be inclined to leave it. That way, the onus passes to the new owner and given its rarity, it's really a case of whether you want it or not, the condition being of only minor importance. I suppose the obverse isn't smothered with the green stuff?

I haven't checked your assessment, but assuming you are right, it is an extremely rare coin and moreover is one of the most sought after of the 20th century penny varieties. Given the current condition of the market and some less than exciting pennies recently sold at auction for phenomenal figures, it could be worth thousands.

Good to argue without falling out. Now what contentious issue can I bring up next...?

My recollection is that from 15 February, the old money was only legal tender in lots of 2 1/2p (6d), so if you had 5d, hard cheese!

John, 'a pissed up speeding rugby player on cocaine killed 4 innocent female members of the same family as well as himself.' It would depend on how contrite he was and whether he had ever done anything like it before, and just as important was he ever likely to do it again (e.g. was he addicted to drugs). Ban him from driving for life and make him clean care homes for 3 years - cheaper and much more useful. Having him in the community is something we would have to face up to in the end anyway, as he would eventually be released. The 20 year old you mention had previous and so falls into my category of 'persistence', see earlier in the thread, so I would support a custodial sentence in that case, yes. As has been said before, hard cases make bad law and you are quoting extreme examples here, there are many, many more which are nowhere near as clear cut, and people can and do show an overwhelming level of remorse. There was a case around here only two weeks ago where another 20 year old was speeding and became involved in a crash in which his two young passengers were killed. There will be no point in the judge sending him to prison, because it would have to be in an urn. He hanged himself. And although it's going to sound like Monty Python's Three Yorkshiremen sketch, I was born and brought up in a tough part of London (think Steptoe's yard and you wouldn't be a million miles away), so do know a bit about crime from the receiving end. We are all the prisoner of our experience and our upbringing and I appreciate and respect that you are an ex-policeman, it is a job I would hate to do but seeing a disproportionate level of death and destruction can colour your judgement, being divorced from the immediate experience of related crime is, after all why we have juries. From my point of view, if you can be reasonably certain that an individual is not going to commit a similar crime again (and it wasn't violent), then what is the Earthly reason in spending a fortune sending them to gaol for 5 years, feeding and clothing him, and then sending him back out on the streets as a newly qualified safe-breaker. As I said though, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree...

I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one. The difference between driving without due care and causing death by dangerous driving is frequently bad luck and the difference in tariff is a £50 fine or 3 years at her majesty's. I know people aren't going to like this, but you can't let the familes of victims dictate the penalty, it would be like letting football supporters referee the game. We've all done stupid things in our lives, just most of them don't turn out to be fatal, and there but for the grace of god go us all. Generally speaking, Britain is at the top end of the European league in terms of the percentage of its population incarcerated in gaol and I suspect it is very unlikely that the likes of Gary Hart would have ended up in prison in any European country other than here.

I was right at the front end working the till in my Dad's shop on the actual day. Lot of confused pensioners who just trusted what you gave them. Being young, it never really bothered me - I used to have more trouble with Quadruple Green Shield stamps

And decreasing... Seriously, this is the sort of over-hyped coin you want to avoid, at least for some years by which time the only people interested in them will be us collectors.

Another thing that I noticed at W & W last week was what I perceived as a severe shortage of individual lots. Did anybody else pick this up? I have only been to one W & W auction before so this may be normal, but in my view there just didn't seem to be a huge amount there.

I hope your northern coin auction does get off the ground, at present the whole thing seems very South East/Midlands centred and although my chances of attending a sale in Newcastle or Carlisle are slim, it will at least give northern dealers/collectors a chance to get a slice of the action, which I clearly didn't do over lot 20!

I would go with violence and persistence but otherwise agree with you. There are too many people in prison for non-violent crimes they are never going to repeat (remember the case of, I think it was Gary Hart who accidentally drove a trailer onto a railway line which caused a fatal accident? He was gaoled because he had had insufficient sleep the night before. A case crying out for a community sentence, but instead he got 3 years - a total waste of time and money).

Be prepared for myriad edge knocks, laminate is much more numismatics friendly.

I tried that one on a recent purchase... Unfortunately, the auction house decided that the invoice/receipt needed to be sent to my home address, and given that Mrs Cerbera and I share the same first initial and the aforementioned auction house hadnt thought to prefix 'J Cerbera' with Mr or Mrs, she opened it Was I for the high jump that evening when I got home from work! Hmmm... the answer out of that one is to say that you bought it at a good price and intend to make a profit on it, that usually placates them. If she investigates further, just open an enquiry entitled 'cosmetics - cost of' that should work. Having been in wedded bliss for 35 years, I consider myself something of an expert on the subject.

You are probably right. I thought estimates were there to help the bidder, not to be used as a commercial tool. In this case, the estimates were as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

I would echo that several lots sold, a predictable price obtained and no obvious problems.

Usually unexpected wear like this is due to it having been kept in a purse or a pocket for an extended period of time with the rest of the loose change (and people used a lot more of it in those days). 10 years in those conditions doesn't do anything for the grade!

To be honest, I was very pleased with the lot that I bought which strangely was not heavily bid; around 150 coins, 100 total junk but the rest quite saleable whether on e-bay or through my website. Not only did it include the cu-ni error coin that we have been talking about recently but also an 1804 dollar in condition approaching VF, an 1887 YH shilling above EF and an 1855 obv. 2 farthing in NEF. I would estimate that I could easily double my money without charging outlandish prices although to be fair I need a hell of a lot more like this to make a living... A feature of the auction was the number of bids from the floor, far more than I had seen at previous sales either there, at Lockdales or London Coins. I don't envy you, John, living so far from the main auction centres as it appears to me that in the present climate, distance bids are doomed to fail.

With cleaning, I would go for about £20-£25 on a good day. They are interesting coins but quite common ones (I've got no less than four in Fine-VF), so Palves, tell your friend to keep his money in his pocket and shop around. Just one word of warning, they do get rather expensive in the very highest grades.

Hard times have come to Manchester United as 19 people on their payroll are made redundant. The 7 referees and 12 linesmen are said to be devestated by the news.