Red Riley

I think it's a George III shilling 1816-20 but given the amount of verdigris, it may be a contemporary forgery - almost as common as the real thing. I can't tell anything from the reverse, which just appears to be a mass of corrosion. To find the date, try scratching at the legend under the head. If it is genuine, it will have a value as a result of being 92.5% silver but otherwise nothing.

Given the metal used and the absence of a date, my first thought was that it was a coin weight. But the real thing checks out at 20 mm. diameter, 2.76 g, so I'm struggling. Could it be a toy coin?

That's completely off the wall. A bit like describing a classic wine as being 'rather wet'. There are some interesting people out there!

I would be surprised if there was any intention to defraud here. I suspect that a re-entered 'O' is way beyond the wit of e-bayers selling scrap bronze at 99p a throw. The first photograph looks like it was taken in natural light and the second under artificial light or possibly even a scanner. I can't explain the shadow in the first photo but these things happen. Photoshop when used correctly, is a useful tool and I find it essential to adjust the brightness/contrast when photos typically turn out too dark largely as a result of an automatic camera over-correcting the light exposure. Where it tips into fraud is functions like the spot-healing tool which can remove stains or spots of verdigris. I even have a function that can give the impression of wrapping the entire coin in plastic! Unfortunately there isn't one which works the other way round and removes the slab...

Entitled 'Victoria on a po'.

Hmmm... interesting. Why is she sitting on what looks like an oversized football, holding a tea tray and a shovel rather awkwardly in her left hand while pointing at something out of shot with her right? All rather enigmatic... I remember seeing a few altered Britannia's for sale over the years. The first had Britannia's shield recut into a swastika, and then there was this which was for sale on e-bay two or three years back; Sorry, the edit function won't let me insert pictures so I'll put it on a new post.

These are rather poor images of a 3d dated 1562. Definitely a replica in pewter.

There are a few dodgy Elizabeth I coins around. Most of the forgeries are made of pewter and have a curious 'r' shaped mark on them. Almost impossible to tell from a photo though.

Thanks Colin.

A badly altered 1935 went for a hundred and something quid at the recent London Coins auction.

Hi Kath, I don't live a million miles from you and am just starting up as a dealer when I finally get everything together! I am quite well known on this site, so have a reputation to protect (whether my reputation's good or bad I don't know...). If you are interested, just PM me and I can pop over and have a look. Derek

I think we're all living parallel lives; I worked in Compliance, preceded by ten years as a salesman. I even had a stint working for the Financial Ombudsman Service. Perhaps we need a Numismatic Ombudsman? No, didn't think you'd agree...

And when we've done that, can we move round to HR and Compliance ? They normally have some pretty girls working in HR...

Thanks Bob, I like the elegance of the traditional system from Poor through to Extremely Fine and their variants; ignore Good and Very Good altogether and have serious misgivings about Uncirculated.

I don't know whether this is s stupid question but... Say I put in a postal bid on a lot for say, £50 and then attend the auction. The lot opens up with the auctioneer holding a bid of £50. I really want this piece and am prepared to pay more but I don't know whether the bid held by the auctioneer is mine or one for a similar amount received prior to mine. So to actually purchase the lot, I might potentially have to bid against myself. Have I misread the situation or is this a distinct shortcoming of the system? I put the question to Warwick & Warwick who replied; 'You can place a bid on a lot via post or e-mail. However, if you turn up at the auction on the day, and you want to bid on this lot on the day instead, then you must inform a member of staff to cancel this previous e-mail bid.' which doesn't seem to answer the question. Does anybody know?

I would describe this as being pretty much a classic 'fair'. The terms G (good) and VG (very good) tend to be used more widely in America than Britain. Personally I dislike them as they are frankly dishonest descriptions; a layman using standard English to describe this coin would certainly not use the word 'good'! Anyway, rant over. I am not sure of the current prices but for 50% silver, don't believe it would be worth dramatically more than £1.

Okay thanks for that. As I see it therefore, there are two best ways to approach an auction; 1) Get in a postal bid before anyone else i.e. as soon as the online catalogue is published; 2) Don't bother sending in a postal bid, just attend the auction!

Off topic, but I've always wanted to ask an American about this. It seems reasonably clear that someone has sat down and painstakingly de-Frenchified, if that's a word, the English language. The obvious one is the OU that you have identified, but then there's Centre/center, Defence/Defense etc, etc. I have always assumed that this was something to do with the Louisiana purchase, do you know ? Je ne sais pas. To my knowledge standard spelling was not achieved in the UK until a certain Dr. Johnson wrote his dictionary in 1755, so up until that time you spelt it kind of the way you wanted - to most pwople it was irrelevant anyway as they could neither read nor write. I'm guessing that with the stretched lines of communications between Britain and the colonies, Dr. Johnson's writ never held sway in America and they just did their own thing. Oh sorry, I 'm not an American...

Due in no small measure to the large numbers of American servicemen stationed in this country.

I have always felt that the coins are just the tip of the iceberg and the true joy of collecting is the flights of fancy you can indulge in when handling a coin of any particular year. I did once sit down and work out the chances of a particular individual handling a coin assuming 1) Coin changes hands once a day; 2) stays in circulation for say, 50 years. Sadly, it wasn't very high!

I worked for half my life in the life assuaence field and whilst there were genuine qualifications set by the Chartered Insurance Institute, there was a parallel organistion called the Life Insurance Association. You didn't need any qualifications to get in, and all it was was an organisation where salesmen would trade selling ideas and exchange dodgy handshakes. Of course, all this hit the buffers a few years ago with increasing regulation of the field. Are you telling me that the BNTA is this type of organisation? What we really need is a genuine organisation promoting qualifications in numismatics, something like say, the Chartered Institute of Numismatics. Any volunteers to mark the papers?

I don't know whether there were regional variations, but in my area of West London, I must have seen no more than a couple of dozen well-worn veiled heads in the last two years of l.s.d. and perhaps half that of bun pennies. I wish I'd been where you were!

Must be at least a 42DD. Sorry, couldn't resist...

I remember it like it were yesterday... It was a great time for schoolboys like me to ferret through their loose change, but raities didn't crop up every 5 minutes - in fact most people that checked their change found sweet Fanny Adams, but there was always the chance. Perhaps the most interesting thing I found was an 1872 florin, but purely for its interest value, the only recognisable thing about it was the date! By 15 February 1971 there were very, very few Victorian pennies left in circulation, most having been withdrawn during the sixties as underweight. Nonetheless with the possibility of having no less than 5 monarch's faces on the coins in your pocket, currency was infinitely more interesting than today.

1887 Jubilee Heads though can be like a secondhand Lada when you come to sell. If you want to buy a set, make sure it is very, very cheap!