Red Riley

Amongst a batch of unremarkable George VI halfcrowns that formed a part of a bulk lot I bought at auction yesterday, I found this oddity. It is clearly made of cupro-nickel and at 11.2g is almost exactly the same weight as a florin (the florin I weighed as a control came in at 11.21g) but at almost 30mm. has a slightly larger diameter. The design clearly exceeds the size of the flan as the rim is not complete and at this point the coin seems thinner, almost certainly due to the lack of a rim. And it looks very, very genuine. I would be interested in members' views.

I don't know... the colour of the obverse is similar to a well-worn specimen that I have (http://pennycrowncoins.co.uk/shopping/pgm-more_information.php?id=103&=SID) whilst the reverse colour is either in need of Photoshopping or has already been 'shopped. Purely on the strength of the photograph I'm going for genuine.

Im just a naturally jolly fellow.

Bit of a Naughtie moment...

I'll tell you exactly what I think it is. 1967 pennies went on being minted at Tower Hill until 1970 I believe. I also think that Llantrisant (known locally as 'the hole with the mint') came on stream in what, 1969 or 1970 and until at least 1971 was only producing the vast quantity of bronze required for decimalisation. It therefore follows that Tower Hill was making everything else including the new 5, 10 and 50P coins. When the immediate rush had died down, the old mint would wind down and the workers at Tower Hill were faced with the choice of moving to South Wales or being made redundant. It is a time-honoured British tradition that workers thrown on the dole in such a way have a slightly cavalier approach to their work. They don't sabotage things exactly, but they certainly don't work quite as their employers would like. I think we can propose up all sorts of theories about proofs and trial strikings etc. but I am sure that what happened was that a disgruntled employee simply threw a 10P blank into the penny hopper and this coin is the result. Peckris has already said that 1967 pennies are renowned for the quantity of strange errors that occur (including his famous 'clunking' penny) which would tend to back up my theory. So, nothing complicated just a worker, soon to be made redundant, who had a few too many beers one lunch time and indulged in a very minor act of vandalism. Do I get 'Post of the Day' for that?

What kind of help? I'm happy to help where I can. (Mutters under breath "bagsy pennies or halfcrowns") As long as somebody else does the gold.

Hi Chris, This is clearly an item which transcends mere coin collecting and moves into the area of memorabilia. Could go well at an auction but even they might have trouble deciding what to catalogue it under!

It is undenible that grading has changed but there would be pause for thought if a particular design was always coming up with strange bi-grades such as GVF/F (I'm not saying that applies to this particular coin) and I suspect that there has been a trend to even these things out a little. Some anomolies however still exist and it is commonplace for most George V coins to have a higher grade on the reverse than the obverse, principally because the obverse has so little detail that what there is quickly erodes leaving a largely smooth head whilst retaining a very bold legend. The 1902 crown seems to work in the opposite way to the halfcrown - if you lay it on a table obverse down, the whole thing pivots on the side of the king's head but turn it over, and it sits perfectly flat. The result is a worn head and an apparently unworn reverse. Who said grading was simple!

Plain as a pikestaff.

I did do a bit of research on this, the concensus I got being that most people considered the garter to be part of the design rather than the legend. Since this bit wears so readily, if it was treated as part of the legend, there would be no coins (or at least the reverse of them) in Fine or Fair at all, the grading effectively dropping from VF straight through to Poor.

Next time give me a shout beforehand.

I would agree Peter although it only just scrapes over the line.

Er... so have I (that was me sitting near the front wearing an appalling Lonsdale sweater). I was prepared to bid up to £1600 on lot no. 1 (est £1,000) but the bloody thing went for over £3k and that continued pretty much throughout! I bought a couple of nice individual lots and a sticky and smelly bulk lot that had clearly been in somebody's attic for decades. Hopefully there are a few bits and pieces in there to make money on. Anybody want five complete Elizabeth II halfpenny date runs? It may just be my imagination but I get the impression that the hammer prices at W & W are even higher than those at recent London Coin Auctions sales.

It's a William and Mary, any fool can see that. Actually, if Carlsberg did tin farthings it's exactly as I would expect them.

I walked there last year from just south of Munich. Beautiful countryside and Fussen is a nice town. Incidentally, there is always that well known Lincolnshire town, Sc*nthorpe.

I wonder how many people pressed the 'enlage' button!

Hi syorks, welcome to the forum. Anything on this subject should begin 'speaking personally...' and so speaking personally, I doubt that sufficient will be melted down to affect the price. I have sold gold coins on e-bay and have found that there are so many sellers and buyers that the market price is almost always met and to be honest I have never encountered problems with either e-bay or paypal. You should make sure that all coins are sent out special delivery and you get cleared funds before sending them. You may find that some buyers are overseas and this may cause a problem with the maximum postal insurance available. Also make sure that the territory they are in has a (comparatively!) good reputation for honesty e.g. USA, Australia, Western Europe; some people say Canada has caused problems and definitely don't sell to China or Russia!

What will you do when your library closes?

Yes, I hadn't thought of that, but perhaps the best answer would be to list coins under their initial value i.e. 6/8d for an angel rather than 8/-. All academic however as I can't see it happening.

Sadly I agree with you, and the 1863 looks to have received a little polish, so unfortunately not very much.

Why do I always find myself being a contrarian? For years I collected halfpennies because they weren't fashionable, although the shillings were more popular. There's me getting fed up with the serried ranks of date runs that all looked the same, so now I specifically look for something to differentiate one coin from the next. Monarch, metal, denomination, mintmark, mint location, designer, error, metal provenance and design feature all provide the opportunity for diversity and has the benefit of something unfashionable always being available. I still can't wean myself off the halfpennies entirely though - some of my patterns are too attractive. I would have to say that my collecting activities did shift from date runs, which I guess is how we all got started, to a much wider spread of coins, eventually not only from this country but from the U.S.A. and Europe too. So from that point of view, I agree with you. Nonetheless, collecting by monarch would be just the other side of the coin (!) from the date run - serried ranks of coins all bearing the same design. To the layman, the most interesting collection would be one where the collector has employed a completely scattergun approach, producing an historical overview of a nation (or even several nations') coinage. However, if you are producing a guide book, some logic has to be employed in its arrangement and using monarch rather than denomination strikes me as faintly bonkers. This is particularly true in the Mediaeval period where what coin was produced in which reign is still a matter of debate and no absolute agreement has been reached. Other anomolies inclue 'posthumous' coinages of such as Henry VII which bear his name and portrait but appear under the coinage of his son, Henry VIII. I suppose the reasons are largely historical (but why did anyone ever think this was a good arrangement?) and if starting again, Seaby's, Spink's or whoever would just follow the trend and go with the much more logical denomination/date method.

While we're on the subject, I think splitting coins into monarchs rather than denominations is bizarre as that just isn't the way most people collect e.g. I collect pennies not King Edward VII coins in general. I know it would muck up their numbering system but as things stand it is a right pain to look things up bearing in mind most other publications and/or websites go by denomination. Or is it my republican tendencies coming through?

I think you are right, they are based on such subjective criteria that they are more or less useless. A better comparison would be to estimate what % they represented of National Average Earning (NAE) but such statistics don't go back anything like that far. However, if the 2p - 3p statistic is anything like correct, in real terms that makes our current decimal penny the lowest value coin ever to circulate in this country (assuming that RPI has doubled since the 1/2p went out of circulation). In America of course, it is worse - the Lincoln cent being worth even less.

I have to say I find this sort of error, which is human in nature, very interesting whereas I am afraid those due to mechanical failures such as blocked and minute alterations in the positioning of letters and teeth leave me cold. This coin was produced some years before universal primary education (1870 rings a bell) and many of the mint workers would have been illiterate so would not have spotted their faux pas. Alternatively, the guy who punched the letters in may have had an off day, was thinking about something else? Who knows, but it's great fun to speculate. Or perhaps I just come from the romantic wing of numismatics.

I'd say from the pic it was about GEF ~ for reference I paid a flat £50 a year ago for a choice BU one. No I can't see any wear either within the limits of the photograph but what is more it seems to have good eye appeal. £20 would be a snip.