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That's lovely Pete, did you buy it?

Thanks Richard, but I am not sure I will ever be in a position to do much more than posts on Predecimal. I had a few years retirement where I was able to spend a lot of time on the hobby, but I am no longer in that position. I could do something like retrieving all my Predecimal copper penny posts and putting them all in one place in a new thread, which could be added to if anything new and relevant needs posting, by myself or other members. We have already discussed book, CD, website options but I am not about to embark on a venture like that myself. The best place to describe copper Victorian pennies is possibly on your own site, and you are most welcome to grab any of my material and put it on there if you wish. I have no desire to attempt to profit from my material, and am more than happy to share for the benefit of the numismatic community. The main problem that I see with any Victorian Copper penny book (or website) is deciding what the sub-varieties should be for each year, and where to draw the line with respect to things such as legend repairs, date differences, colon positions, various dots. A new book (site) should in my opinion start with an introduction about all these different 'features', many of which will have already been mentioned by Gouby or Bramah, and a brand new list (with new naming convention) of each coin which the author considers to be a variety. The naming convention would of course have to allow for any new discovery to slot in neatly. Pictures of the varieties for each year can then follow on, with some mention of rarity. As I have said before, I think that discussion of what is, and what isn't, a sub- variety for each 'feature' that is seen should perhaps first take place on a forum such as this. Personally I would not be happy to presume that I knew enough to forge ahead without spending a good deal of time involving others. Also, I would need to examine coins from other collectors in order to picture all the features to the consistent standard I would like. e.g. I don't have many 1843's, 1849's, 1856's and 1860's in my own collection!

Hi Mike, It's this bit of Bramah's quote which I find particularly difficult. Not sure I have ever seen anything which resembles 2 dots in lower loop of 8. If any member wants a decent copy of Bramah then please message me, I do have 1 spare, but will be asking for close to going rate!

The flaw at front of truncation, bottom left in above set, isn't particularly clear on that example, so here's another one, again on large rose reverse, where flaw has developed a little more......still not as much as it has by time reverse moves to reverse 3 (bottom right picture in above set)

Yes, no surprise Richard. This 8/? obverse (with the 1/1) has 3 reverse pairings, the second being the large rose large date variety. The obverse starts off with no die flaws and then progresses as follows:- First flaw starts above A of VICTORIA and then develops through the bottom of A towards Victoria's head. The flaw at the queen's truncation starts afterwards, I think around the same time as another flaw through the base of the letters OR of VICTORIA All of those are seen to develop on examples of Large Rose, (Reverse 2) seen paired with this obverse The same flaws are then seen on a later reverse (3) without the large rose, but flaws are more developed (timeline). Hopefully the pictures below will clarify. P.S. The other 8/? reverse we have been discussing I think has only a single reverse paired with it.......i.e. the one with the repaired A. So I prefer to think as 2 different types, albeit very similar.

P.S. The distance from the numeral 5 to 8 are also different

The die flaw on your coin is actually in a slightly different location to the one on the coin I pictured earlier, making it a different obverse die, and the 8/?’s are also different. If you count border teeth (beads) from the numeral 1 of the date to where the flaw meets the border you will see that the flaw is one bead further away on your coin. Different flaw positions = Different Dies. In the set of pictures below, your coin is like the bottom two pictures, and the one pictured earlier (like Mike’s) is the top two pictures. It’s not entirely clear what Bramah had in mind when he documented his type 25c, but our two coins are definitely from different obverse / reverse die pairings. Re. Rob’s above comment, die flaws can be great in helping identify some of the rarer coins, and they also give us a ‘chronological sequence’ i.e. as the flaws develop. You will see that the obverse on your coin has a number of die flaws; these flaws are seen developing in the exact same locations when this obverse is paired with two other earlier reverses. The second of the 3 reverses paired with this obverse is the rare large rose large date variety. If you look for an 1858 large rose large date you will see these obverse flaws, albeit to a lesser extent, noting the same 1 over 1 in the date as well as the same 8/?. Hope this helps, rather than confuses!

Well spotted Mike. It's another one of those 8/? dates which is often discussed, and has some unusual protrusions on the numeral 8, which aren't always obvious.......these are highlighted by red arrows in my attached picture. I think this date variety is always seen with a die flaw running from front of truncation to border. I believe this type is a single obverse / reverse die pairing; I have always noted that the reverse paired with this particular obverse has a number of 'signature' legend repairs, the most interesting probably the repaired first A of BRITANNIAR.................also pictured below.

1870 dot almost circular, can't see a flaw on my lower grade piece.

Pictured below are the dates on my three 1843 REG Colon pennies. The reader will notice that even with a handful of dies there are date width variations, and there also appears to be a possible font difference to the numeral 4. There is also an even narrower date width on some 1843’s with no REG colon. Penny collectors will know that date width variations are covered by MG in his 2009 Bronze book, and also to some extent on his website for Coppers. Small / large numerals, narrow / wide dates are also already referenced elsewhere. It seems, therefore, that these would need to be covered in any new reference documentation to satisfy the needs of many collectors. But the question then arises as to how far this should be taken. If one looks at a more common year, 1851, I have found 12 different date varieties, including font variations. I have stopped counting on 1853’s and 1858’s! As for any font variations I think these are definitely worthy of documenting. I have not mentioned other different features seen on this series (e.g. Plume variations) but think I will leave it there for now, as I am aware that I am ‘hogging’ the site with my meanderings. Just one final fleeting thought, would you rather have a Fine 1843, or an EF+ 1857 Slender 7? I think the latter is rarer, but both can be had for around £100.

I have now done some statistics for 1843 pennies from my 5 year records of all ebay listings. The main reason for this post is to demonstrate, by using a rarer year with fewer dies, some difficulties in how to catalogue the 1839-1860 penny series. Looking first at the main split, there were 127 examples listed over the 5 years of my study. The vast majority of these were low grade, and many pictures were not great either, resulting in me marking up 27 of these as “cannot see REG clearly enough to decide whether there is a colon present”. I could, however, see the date. The above was rather handy because that left exactly 100 pieces, of which 62 had a colon, i.e. 62% of the 1843 population. I believe that will come as no surprise. I then split the 62 REG Colon coins as follows:- TYPE Count % of all 1843's Bramah 3b (DFF) 12 12% Cannot See DE(F)F 5 REG Doubled Colon 9 9% Remaining 36 Totals 62 At this point I checked all London Coins 1843 auction pictures back to 2009. There were 33 sales; a couple of these coins sold more than once over the years. I could see 13 without a REG Colon, and 20 with. Out of the 20 with REG Colon there were 3 DFF’s and 2 Doubled REG Colons, although the latter was the same piece being auctioned twice, 3 months apart….and with no mention of the doubled REG Colon. I guess this is not surprising, as this feature, to my knowledge, is not documented anywhere, and quite rare………..but the question is “should it be documented as an 1843 sub-variety?” Clearly this repair was ‘man-made’, and is also more obvious than other similar ‘colon’ repairs (e.g. the 1855 FID 3 colons, which I believe has been categorised in the CGS population report), so one could argue that the 1843 :: is worthy of being documented as a sub-variety. Having said that, if one goes down the path of documenting legend repairs then where do you ‘draw the line’? If you were to examine hundreds of Victorian ‘Young Head’ pennies you would eventually find repairs to every letter, colon, and numeral in the entire legend………….some of these being far more obvious than others, for example the repair to F of DEF seen on the 1841 penny, and already documented by Bramah as his type 2c. Collectors who own an 1841 Bramah 2c would naturally wish to see that type documented within any new reference material, but in my opinion there are other ‘same letter’ repairs even worse than that particular one, and more worthy of inclusion……see for example the multiple E repair pictured immediately below. I would definitely include as variety types any letter or number which has been repaired with a different letter or number. This would mean, for example, that the 1858 F/B in DEF should be included as a new variety. Whilst on the subject of colon dots, readers will also recall many posts on this forum about ‘dot varieties’. Dots have been seen on quite a few ‘Young Head’ pennies, e.g. 1854 (under the I of VICTORIA), 1855 (on the Queen’s forehead), 1846 (after T of GRATIA), 1853 (after I of GRATIA), 1858 (under 2nd 😎 and 1859 (next to rim above DEF colon). Some of these I think have been referenced by both CGS and London Coins. None of these are ‘man-made’, and as such could be regarded as not being ‘true’ varieties, but again collectors who own these pieces would probably wish to see them documented in any new reference material. Imagine omitting an 1897 dot penny or 1875 canon-ball out of a Victorian Bronze penny book! As for the DFF varieties, documented by Bramah, for both 1843 and 1844, these are clearly not F’s, but rather they are E’s which have lost a piece of the bottom leg. They are, however, quite sought after by variety collectors, who would undoubtedly ‘throw a wobbly’ if left out of new reference material. I am going to follow on from this post with one which shows the date varieties I have found on my 1843 REG Colon pennies.

Working hard on those antique house clearances from past 25 years:- https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1848-Queen-Victoria-One-Penny/224164077427?hash=item3431385f73:g:0iwAAOSwHh1fZ7oR

Thanks for your comments about my Victorian Copper Penny pictures Jerry; also Mike and others.............. glad to be able to help. Whilst authoring a book has a certain 'prestigious'' appeal, in this day and age I don't actually think it is the best way of sharing / improving knowledge about coin varieties, particularly as new discoveries are made and regularly need adding to the knowledge base. I much prefer to have available to me websites such as Richard's englishpennies and rarestpennies sites, this Predecimal site, MG's website (which he has kindly kept going), or even past auction results (e.g. London Coins). A potential problem in coming to rely on these sites is, however, that they may of course disappear one day when site owners can no longer maintain. I definitely think that reference material for the 1839-1860 Victorian Penny varieties would benefit from being pulled together from these various websites, and other sources (e.g. Bramah and Peck), and probably introduce a completely new indexing method at the same time. Prior to that I think there would need to be discussion, for example from members of this forum, about how to do that, what to include and not include, and by providing examples from their own collections. I think I may try to do my next post on 1843 Pennies, giving a couple of examples to demonstrate how difficult such a task might be.

At first glance, numeral 7 on Style E appears to be much longer than on other ‘large’ numeral 1857 varieties, but there is actually not much difference……….the following set of pictures demonstrate. I believe this is a bit of an optical illusion because it is much thinner. Some collectors refer to this type as a ‘slender 7’……….. which I think I prefer).

I agree with Mike that the 1857PT referenced as “much smaller figures” by Spinks in 1895 must be the same as the one shown below, known as Gouby Date Style E, with the tall slim 7. This can be compared to the picture directly underneath, an example of a larger numeral type for this year. Each has been shot at the exact same 60x magnification, with same 1280 image widths, so that a true comparison of the dates can be made. I have tried to centre each coin so that the larger border tooth is 4 teeth from the right hand side of the images. I have spent my spare time over the past couple of days carefully going through my images of all 1857 penny ebay sales over my 5 year study period. Nothing from this sample of 621 coins appears to have smaller numerals than seen on Gouby Style E. In this sample there were 66 Gouby Style E pieces, around 10% of the entire 1857 population. In my 5 year study period this 1857 Gouby Style E sub-variety actually appeared less often than say an 1846, 1845 or even an 1843. The numbers are more on a par with an 1849, or 1853 Plain Trident. This may surprise, but perhaps partly explain the 1895 Spinks wording. One other thing that I noted was that Plain Trident 1857’s represent 68% of the population, slightly at variance with Bramah’s observations where he states on his Page 109:- “for 1857 the P.T. are commoner than the O.T. as about 3 to 1, and the latter may be regarded as scarce”.

The numerals on the atlas example are in the correct position for it to be a 5/5, although the top of the 2nd 5 looks straighter than I have seen before. I'm still thinking that it is most likely a 5/5. I have owned 8 examples of the 5/5 over the years and they all have the same obverse / reverse legend features. Atlas, suggest you check the obverse to see if yours has the small protrusions I have highlighted on the OR of VICTORIA, and then check the reverse (which should be a Plain Trident) to see if the NN of BRITANNIAR looks like the picture below.

Here's an 1854/3 which I bought on ebay for £7.50 in 2008. I sold it to Andy Scott in 2014, and presume it was sold as part of his collection through Spinks, think 2015........but I don't know where it went. I owned this piece before I had a digital microscope, so pictures of 4/3 in date are not great. However, if you stare at the overdate you can see the 3 appear from underneath, including the tip of the middle bar poking out at the right hand side of the inner part of the 4.........not often seen.

Anyone know why 8 came out as a smiley face in my above post!!??

Hi Richard, I did a screenshot of this one, sold on ebay in December 2009 by Michael Freeman. He added a couple of interesting comments, hope they are clear enough to read in my image. Just checked your 'rarestpennies' site for the 1854/3's and I'm certain that your last Example, (Number 😎 is not an 1854/3 as you suspected. All examples I have ever seen are paired with a reverse which has a particular set of legend features; amongst other things these include a slanted colon after BRITANNIAR which is higher than usual + the top dot clearly more distant from the R than usual. Example 8 on your site has a very different colon position.

Hi Richard, I don't think the 1858 with smaller numerals (not 8/6) is particularly rare. London Coins past auctions may not be the best place to assess this; a quick look at ebay reveals at least 2 on there at this moment. I have sold quite a few 1858 smaller numerals over the years, and have examples from 5 slightly different smaller numeral obverse dies in my own collection.......including the large rose type with the flaw through the 5. These can be seen below, noting some slightly different numeral locations in respect to border teeth, and the different repairs to the second 8. The large rose / small date being at the bottom of this set of images. I'm sure that there will be more examples than your 20 limit for 'rarestpennies'. Hope this helps, Ian

The 1857 Gouby Date Style C is seen paired with both OT and PT; I have both types in my collection. I'm pretty sure I have seen it paired with the Ornamental Trident less often, but I have not attempted any stats on this. The most interesting one I have found is this one (Plain Trident Reverse), which has a 'repaired' numeral 8. Just back from holiday last night, internet was not good whilst away. Can see I missed a few posts about Victorian Copper pennies, and think I may have a few additional comments to make when get time.

I'm hoping that there will be an expert on the forum who can read silver markings. I'm not actually sure that the piece is solid silver because it looks quite tarnished, almost plated with some wear, but the markings do also look like they could be hall marks to me. Felt sure there would be brains on here to help, rather than me wasting time on the internet trying to pin it down. Thanks in advance.

Many thanks Jerry

Well spotted though Jerry

Don't see many of the B26a's nowadays Mike. I think most are tucked away in collections. I'm sure I saw them more often when I first started collecting. I ought to try and do some stats on that variety from my 5 year ebay sample when I get time.