damian1986

Please check scans to confirm condition. As in, "grading is subjective so it could go a little either way but I'm pretty sure you'll be happy to purchase as an EF or thereabouts." Is this coin even worth the postage?

The Times, 6th January 1854.

Yes unlikely he bought it as a 2+G I suppose, is he just pulling a saxby? I'd give him the benefit of the doubt except that it's still listed as obv. 2 and he says he has higher res images available on request so I don't understand why he didn't use those in the first place!

Me too. This coin is still being listed as the 2+G, did either of you get a reply from the seller? He insisted it had 15 leaves in the wreath, so must be obverse 2! I pointed out that the photo wasn't of sufficient quality to examine the leaves but that the position of the bust was the clincher. He didn't reply further! At this point then he's hoping somebody buys it and doesn't send it back. Must be an awkward position to be in though if he actually bought it as a 2+G, but surely now he just has to take the hit?

Me too. This coin is still being listed as the 2+G, did either of you get a reply from the seller?

Yep I was being a bit of a bell-end. I'm actually not a huge fan of the supposed defenders of the language who get on their high horse on radio 4.. language evolves. But I do begrudge undeservedly-famous cretins naming their daughters Rainbow presumably for a bit of press coverage. Gotta keep up the profile.

That's brilliant! They actually accepted that one? Full credit to whoever named their twins Benson and Hedges.

Ah the name-bashing is maybe a little harsh on second thoughts, except since no one had the bright idea of naming their daughter Rainbow in the last 500 years, which I estimate is about as long as we've been actually referring to rainbows as 'rainbows', why start now? Incidentally, in case you weren't already aware, Rainbow Aurora celebrated her first birthday last month. This one didn't make it into The Times but thankfully E! Online picked it up.

I thought the same about Tracey. I'd like to see Boley brought back, in place of Chardonnay, Rainbow or Peaches (now is this last one going to cause offence?) This came about as a result of some research I was doing around the half farthing - trying to gauge public opinion on them when they became legal tender in Britain. Apparently the public thought them unnecessary and letters were written to The Times but I haven't been able to find anything. In fact, what I did find is a letter from A Friend of the Working Man championing the coinage of the labouring classes, at least insofar as it was "of importance to the labouring man this his shilling should be divisible into many parts" (February 1st, 1845). He goes on to propose a decimal system based on the French franc - one where the base unit, in this case he suggested the shilling, be divided into 100 parts. They got to this... in 1970. There are many other calls for a decimal coinage at this time. (17th of September 1853).

Oh I forgot there was an actual purpose to this thread. I think we reached an agreement to stop. I did anyway, implicitly. Are you actually entertaining the notion of getting a new machine? I never once said that Macs aren't excellent at what they do - bob into the Apple store and try one out or borrow one from a fellow northern forum member for a couple of days...

I zoomed the screen on my Mac and could just about make it out - never mind that the coins were converted into low denominations, just think what they'd be worth now in UNC! Mind you, the silly girls would have been long dead... A truly excellent feature of the operating system! Sorry yes there is a larger photo didn't realise it had been scaled down.

Yes I'm probably being a bit harsh on the graphics but for what you're paying I just don't think a 775M is good enough. I did say high-end video editing and gaming for which a beast of a card would be better - granted you may not need such a card but £1700 is a pretty good budget for a new machine you could easily accommodate one. Again 1TB is fine but in the context of price I'd like to see an ssd in there. They're edging their way towards being standard issue and many-an-old-laptop could be salvaged just by replacing the hard drive with an SSD - the performance improvements are that significant. I have had problems with a few older webcams and a graphics tablet in the past but you're right probably the whole of the hardware market is writing drivers for macs now that OS X is so prevalent. And actually the latest flavours of Linux don't seem to have too many problems with hardware so this is becoming much less of an issue. I only really had two points to make: (1) that Apple do charge a premium on their products by virtue of the strength of their brand and (2) they do not offer excellent value for money at the hardware level. The first point I haven't really addressed but it's fair to assume that they're not operating on tight margins! And as to the second point I think this is covered. Now, as to what constitutes value is partly subjective - if you're invested in Apple technologies and deem their software to be superior or better-suited to your needs (both in terms of what you need now and what you're likely to need in 2 years time) then excellent: make the purchase and be happy with what is ultimately a very good product. Just to add, are viruses etc. really keeping most IT technicians in business? I don't know that Apple have ever done networking and IT infrastructure that well and certainly when we get to the servers running the likes of Facebook and the BBC you're looking at an operating system like Red Hat.

Another Collector's Anonymous post. I'm trying to figure out what would make up a *representative* collection of bronze and copper without going gung-ho on every Freeman and Peck die combination or known variety. Type collecting or by monarch appeals more at the minute but I don't know how well this works with copper. I took a bunch of farthings and ha'pnies out the other day to look at which ones I'd keep and which ones I don't like any more. Ended up with some coins I'd struggle to part with and then decided there'd be no point shipping the rest off as otherwise I'd be left with a bunch of coins that don't *mean anything* (i.e. don't complete anything) but look nice. So really I'm trying to work out where to go from here. My interests are more diverse now and some of the early early coins are very expensive so have to be realistic in terms of budget too, can't have everything. Not sure what I'll do yet, but opinions welcome!

Thanks Peckris just trying to figure out your logic here. Different legends for Liz II and George VI and one of every effigy of George V. Suppose there'd have to be a darkened penny in there and possibly a KN (but not likely in BU!) for the mint. How about the bunhead coinage what do you reckon? I only really got as far as older features, Heaton mint, younger features and beaded border. Yes, you got my idea. (1945 for a darkened penny, and a 1918KN in VF). For bun pennies, the differences in obverses and reverses are subtle. I'd say a common type of 1860 beaded border, then 1862 or 1863 in EF minimum. 1874 is the first 'aged' obverse (subtle!), and any date between 1889 and 1893 for the last main subtle obverse type. That would also sweep up most of the main reverse types, provided you ignore the 1860/1861 'signature below foot' '..below rocks' '..below bust' 'no signature' variations. For wide / narrow date varieties, both exist for 1875 and neither are especially expensive. For Heaton (H) 1882 is the cheapest option. If you want one bun in genuine BU, 1890-92 are the cheapest, with 1889 not far behind. For halfpennies and farthings there are far fewer variations and also they're more affordable. Thanks Peckris with the halfpennies I've gone 1887, 1875H and 1862, partly because I already have them and partly because I do notice the obverse differences between 1875H and 1887. My thinking is to add a beaded border type and thereafter let funds, availability and desirability of individual pieces dictate whether or not any other varieties are added which probably works better for me. Appreciate the advice, cheers

Well there's scope for getting it wrong but it's not that difficult nowadays to piece together a system of compatible components. One thing Windows did get right is support for the myriad hardware available - so long as you go with a known and trusted vendor I don't see too many problems. If you were looking at going down the Intel route you'd have probably only half a dozen motherboards to choose from for any given chipset. As to viruses you're correct but if Apple suddenly consumed the whole of the desktop market I'm pretty sure you'd see many more start to appear. Apple aren't invulnerable (which is why Comet were marketing Macs as "do not get PC viruses" rather than "do not get viruses" hah). Sorry, but most of this is untrue. Well I didn't just make it up!!! The Dell P2815Q is a 28" monitor with a resolution of 3840 x 2160! It's one of the first affordable 4K screens to come to market and has its issues with refresh rates but at £527 is testament to the quality of monitors the likes of Dell and Asus are pushing out now. Mac monitors are excellent but you can find a quality alternative at a similar price point.Bear in mind that the iMac is £1700 and I think it's completely fair to hold the processor to the very highest standards. The i5 is a decent processor but better-performing ones are available if you have this sort of budget. Turbo boost is a bit of a gimmick. Really the fact that a CPU can be boosted to perform a bit more quickly is by the by when you can safely overclock a CPU by a good 0.5 Ghz. The benchmarks (see here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_ddr3_2400mhz&num=2) attest to high speed memory being much better. And while 8GB at 1600Mhz may be enough it's poor for a machine that's costing £1700, especially given that you can get high speed ram at the price I quoted above.Solid state hard drives have dipped to less than 50p per gigabyte of data now. A 250GB solid state drive + a 2TB mechanical drive for additional storage can be had for less than £200 so we're still within budget here.The stock graphics card in Apple's £1700 machine is not very good. It gets killed by the GTX 580 which is two (nearly three) generations old. The GTX 760 will set you back £170, again well within the budget of a £1700 machine.

Precisely why I've built my own desktops over the years - it means I can have exactly what I want for less than a pre-built one. Yeah it's the best way to go about it and I run Windows as my core OS with other operating systems running as virtual machines. Unfortunately you can only develop Mac and iOS apps using a Mac machine so you pretty much have to go out and buy one of their products. I have a Mac Mini which represents the cheapest option given its intended usage. It's more difficult with laptops though where you can't pick-and-choose your monitor and case and in this area Apple excel, build quality is excellent. That said if you went to Dell for an ultrabook at the same price as a Macbook you could give them a run for their money. In the interests of balance Windows is a pain in the arse platform at the best of times and their latest monstrosity (8) is detrimental to... actually using the thing. Linux-based operating systems are wonderful until you realise that no one wrote the drivers for your sound card and half the software you want has to be compiled from source.

And the massively important third thing is the brand. You're paying more because it comes in a pretty white box and they paid Mitchell and Webb and whoever else to market their shiny products. Their components are, as a general rule, high quality, but not strictly value for money if you're really looking to get juice out of your machine! E.g. the 27 inch iMac at £1,740: 27" monitor, beautiful3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i5Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz8GB (two 4GB) memory at 1600MHz1TB hard drive 7200rpm NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M with 2GB video memoryNot actually very good!! Mac monitors are excellent but you can pick up a high-end 4K screen for in the region of £600 now. The i5 is a hell of a lot cheaper than the i7 and performs far worse. You can get a six-core i7 processor overclocked for in the region of £400. Turbo boost is nonsensical. Just overclock your processor to 4.5 GHz and be done with it. 8GB of ram is piss-poor for a high-end machine. 16GB of ram operating at 2400 Mhz is easily achieved for in the region of £130 A 1TB mechanical hard drive costs about £50. You want a solid state drive nowadays. The graphics card is not particularly good if you want to do any high end gaming or video processing work. As to the operating system debate, well, pros and cons across the board. Mac OS is well-polished but fewer software vendors develop for the platform and support for any hardware that Apple didn't develop drivers for is rubbish.

You have to factor in the artist's time on this one Matt

Thanks Rob that's a very good point!

Thanks Peckris just trying to figure out your logic here. Different legends for Liz II and George VI and one of every effigy of George V. Suppose there'd have to be a darkened penny in there and possibly a KN (but not likely in BU!) for the mint. How about the bunhead coinage what do you reckon? I only really got as far as older features, Heaton mint, younger features and beaded border.

Rob it's difficult given the potential scope for collecting. I wouldn't have entertained the notion of purchasing something from the middle Anglo-Saxon period 12 months ago but I'm largely motivated by coins as historical entities and this is now a viable buy - going from collecting a few farthings and some decimal to being that bit more invested in numismatics brings with it these sorts of concerns I just need a little inspiration really. I know that unless I can make sense out of my collection as a whole I'll lose interest in individual pieces, although the rules by which I collect don't necessarily have to be that well-defined. Your points are valid though appreciate the feedback, thanks.

This would be ideal, so lots of collectors do that do they? Any particular examples / approaches? This would work, just wondering how I'd maintain the balance of the collection were I to have more than one coin per monarch / period or if I should be strict with myself. Yes the Cromwell farthing comes later.. Ah this is the problem though, a date run 1970 to 1860 in BU is very difficult, even omitting rarer Freeman types. Really I suppose I'm trying to find a way of justifying having one or a few coins per period whilst retaining some sense of purpose / goals as a collector.

Thanks Paulus. This was a suggestion for Dan as he's off to Wakefield this weekend although I was looking at a 1902 florin earlier and may end up buying it - the other nice thing about 1902 is that the dies were brand new this year so the strike is usually better and given how easily this coin wore anyway...

A couple of other suggestions (pre 1960 though) with gold taken out of the equation: Any of the crowns 1887 to 1910. Saint George slaying the dragon reverse. I have an unhealthy interest in the designs of Benedetto Pistrucci.A florin 1902 to 1910. Very nice reverse, Britannia before everything went to shit. I have an unhealthy interest in Susan Hicks Beach.

Yep and like I say I don't want to have a go at the dealer! Sorry Andrew! It's a nice coin and I'd like it in my collection but the premium on the slab is way too high. 1. A CGS 85 can't be said to equate to MS65 if other TPGS won't grade it MS65. Don't get me wrong, resubmission of this coin may see it come back MS65, but still. 2. 100-point scale, 70-point scale, RB, RD, ... let's not forget what's inside that slab. 3. If a 1924 half penny in UNC is going to cost collectors £125 (I assume best offers would have to be reasonable) it's time to give up.