secret santa

There is at least one auction house (it may be Goldberg) that allow you to specify an incremental bid or halfbid in the event of your highest bid being matched. Seems a good idea. I still have a problem with the case you illustrate. If I submit a maximum bid of, say, £500, I expect the lot to go to at least the next bidding step to overbid me. I think that is a reasonable and logical assumption. So, when the auctioneer takes my bid of £480 in sequence and asks for a bid of £500, he should in my opinion have to take a higher bid to outbid my commission bid. But clearly, this doesn't necessarily happen.

I think that this does happen (it's happened to me) but surely if I were the first person to bid £500, the auctioneer should be duty and morally bound to ask another bidder to go higher in order to win ?????

Like I mentioned in the other thread, often an auctioneer will let a lot go to a room bidder who matches the maximum postal/commission bid - unethical in my view.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1861-Great-Britain-One-Penny-No-LCW-No-Signature-George-III-Penny-KM-794-2/263337867083?hash=item3d5028f74b:g:aPcAAOSwySlaFPJq George III in drag ???????

Yes, but to state the obvious, this is an example of a different reverse variety rather than a variation of date spacing.

Didn't know that fact before. Hope I'm a bit more polite when I snuff it.

As Rob says, if there is only a handful known of a particular variety, collectors will snap them up regardless of condition. Some of the coins on my website are little better than washers, yet have sold for hundreds of pounds !

Take a look through my rarest penny website (below) - the pennies featured there will still be worth quite a bit even if corroded like yours.

very clever, not seen that before.

Thanks sabrejv, all useful information.

Yes, interesting. It would be good if we could get a Royal Mint comment/perspective.

Like Arsene Wenger, I see nothing.......

So, Rob, are you saying that all proofs are struck in the same way but some emerge with the "super sharp" effigy and mirror fields ? i.e. all proofs are equal but some are more equal than others ?

Plenty of plausible theories but who can give the definitive answer ? The Royal Mint ?

You're right and I've now found it but it's a PDF and too big to attach.

I think I remember Peter Andrew buying a lot from LCA (Elstree collection ?) which included a document regarding 1897 variations. He sent me a copy but I've saved it to somewhere that I can't find !

I agree with Jerry. It's quite easy on worn coins to convince oneself that something is not as it should be, but collectibility is in the eye of the beholder although, as Jerry says, it is best to confirm genuine oddities on coins in EF or better condition (assuming one can find them - but if you can't, it probably means that they are not worth recording).

Catalogues won't be out for a little while.

Actually, ignore that, it's not always true !!!

No - a useful guide is that the top of the curved part of the 3 is just about level with the top of the curved part of the 6 on open 3 varieties but lower on normal varieties.

Desperately sad to lose a fellow lover of coins.

Here are the pictures of Louise's 1860 penny.

The waves are the clue - clear daylight between base of waves and double exergue.

Pareidolia........................

Thanks Mike - fascinating and very relevant to numismatics !