DougB

After being taken in by a couple of real duds, I swore I'd stay away from E-Bay. However, despite my resolutution I found myself poring over the listings last weekend and I've picked up a nice sixpence at a fair price. The interesting point is the provenance of the coin. It was purchased by the seller on 6/10/1977 from Seaby's of London as UNC for £20. This raises the question, how would one go about determining the historical guide price of a coin in a particular year? Is there an online resource or does one simply look out for older Price Guides in second hand bookshops? The coin in question :

As long as the capsules are acrylic the capsules should be OK. On the other hand, PVC capsules / sleeves need to be avoided because such nasties as VOCs and free chorine. The difference between PVC and acrylic resin capsules should be quite obvious.

As Quadrums are metric sized, I found that some denominations just don't fit snugly in any insert. My attempts to resize inserts by hacking them with sissors were pitiful to behold. For me, the solution was to purchase a hot-wire foam and polystyrene cutter - perfect for adjusting insert apertures by a few millimetres.

Thanks for the advice Rob. I've just picked up a range of decades of C of E on Amazon for literally pennies. I have an older ESC where the previous owner has ticked off his collection the book. In consequence, browsing makes me very envious. Unfortunately no tickets, but the seller has kindly offered to hunt out the invoice. What's the significance of the G130 / G399?

Hi folks ... a real newbie question. I've been looking at images of the 1787 shilling and I note that there are variations in the garter star at the centre of the Hanovarian arms. On some coins there is a distinct raised field to each point of the star while on others the field is missing - as illustrated. Am I correct in assuming this variation is indicative of the quality of the strike rather than any die differentiation?

Thanks for the reply, Rob. I came across a British Numismatic Society article - “The 1787 Shilling - A Transition in Minting Technique by H.E. Manville and P.P. Caspar” - which discusses this coinage in some detail. As you said, the problem originates with dies punched in by hand ... to the extent that: “Even on the reverse dies, however, fine features such as stops, the Westphalian horse, the semee of hearts in the Hanoverian arms, and the strings of the Irish harp were added individually” This two part process neatly explains the apparent variation in the raised star-point field and consistency in the rays of the Garter star that had me puzzled. As an aside, I also came across the following in the same article: “Between 8th February and 23rd May 17,800 lb. Troy of shillings and sixpences were 'issued from the Mint' (i.e. delivered to the Bank), of which 200 journeys of 60 lb. each totalled 744,000 shillings”. I’ve never come across the term ‘journey’ used in this context; I assume it refers to the uninterrupted output ‘run’ of an individual minting press?

> I very carefully 'mop' the coins using cotton buds, which have been saturated in acetone > I normally do not like acetone on copper as prolonged dwell times creates a drying out effect or at times a whitening of the surface (i.e., dry out effect). Hi everyone. I'm a newbie here, and to coin collecting in general, but i do have some chem lab experience. Rather than use a cotton bud, my inclination would be to use a squeeze bottle with a narrow nozzle to apply the acetone and a can of compressed air to remove the solvent. This would allow better control of the extent and duration of the 'wash' process. As mentioned, the problem with acetone is that, as well as being an solvent, is an effective dehydrating agent; if the acetone is allowed to penetrate the deeply ingrained organic gunk on the surface of a coin, the dehydration process can irreversibly discolour the organics. To minimise the dwell time, quick rinses / squirts with a liberal amount of acetone followed immediately by air drying would be more effective method to loosen surface grease and remove it from metal surfaces than prolonged ‘mopping’ or soaking. That's not to say that the dehydrating property of acetone can't be useful. In a manner of speaking, water ‘dissolves’ in acetone. If a coin has been immersed in water, it can be thoroughly dried by means of a quick squirt of acetone followed by a blast of air to evaporate the solvent - a lot more effective than mechanical means and kinder on the metallic surfaces too.