Geoff T

Kuhli, can you private me with your details. It's worth just under a dollar at present rates, so add on likely postage (I imagine only $2 or so) and I'll leave the choice of what you send me up to you.

If we're being realistic rather than romantic, the we have to accept that the economic arguments for and against joining the Euro far outweigh the numismatic ones. No coinage system is written in stone, otherwise we'd all still be using pre-conquest hammered stuff. I'm no fan of the Euro from a numismatic point of view, but that's very much a secondary consideration. (Sorry, have I said something heretical?...)

And there was I thinking I was doing my good deed for the day The offer's still on Kuhli!

I have one in my wallet at this very minute and at least one other at home. Shall I put your name on one?

Are we allowed to include the silver £2 Britannias? If so, they get my vote.

I'm not aware of an official abdication medal ever having been struck, although there are a number of unofficial commemoratives of the abdication. It's the same with the coronation medals; the official one to be struck by the Royal Mint was designed but never issued, although unofficial ones are much commoner than most people imagine.

The halfpenny will be from the Nicholson collection which he acquired recently. He said he would sell a proportion via eBay and the rest privately, and he's already had a huge amount of interest. The collection was probably the finest halfpenny collection of recent times.

Some of the more recent commemoratives have card surrounds rather than those plastic cases which appeared for the first time with the 1953 coronation crown. The 1990 Queen Mother 90th, for example, or the 1997 Queen's golden wedding, come in sealed plastic bubbles in a card surround. The lack of uniformity might make it more difficult for you to display them.

Remember Semele! In Greek mythology Zeus took a fancy to her and whisked her off to Olympus to add to his collection of beddable mortals. Hera was a bit put out - well, you'd be if you were Mrs. Zeus - and had a cunning plan to take her revenge. She disguised herself as Semele's sister and told her to demand Zeus prove his love by appearing in all his glory. She pestered, Zeus tried to put her off, but she was having none of it. Raising herself to her full 5 feet (she was short), she moved towards him (slowly, because of her heels) and threatened to clobber him with her Morgan bag unless he relented. So he did, and she got burnt to a cinder by his godlike radiance. Moral - be wary of demanding to see the real face of anyone, especially if they have flaming red hair and you're a short, slow-moving young female with a Morgan bag.

Farthing? Not in the 1970 set - we minted our last in 1956. The lowest denomination in the 1970 set is the halfpenny, which had been demonetised by 1970 anyway. Did you know, by the way, that the sets weren't actually produced in 1970, but retrospectively a few years later, like the 1972 ones. My advice is also don't try to open it. You should be able to pick up the individual coins quite cheaply if you look around.

Has it occurred to you latter day Orpheuses that a) there may be a mysterious curse attached to anyone who gazes on the visage? Chris might be a three-headed alien from the planet Predec who is hiding his true identity behind his shock-headed avatar? c) He might equally be a 74-year old Saxon Hausfrau who's been kidding us all along? d) ...or nothing more that a computer-generated information system programmed to answer queries? e) That if we see what he looks like, then he's got a right to demand to see what we look like? Geoff (Look, it's not my fault I look like Gary Bushell...)

In January I took my George II coronation medals to a performance of Robert King's reconstruction of the event. It gave me a certain buzz to feel that one of them, at least, had been distributed at the real thing in 1727. If I carry anything around it tends to be in the wallet rather than the pocket. Last thing was an EF Straits Settlement silver dollar of 1907.

I hate to sound like a boring oldie, but to someone who posts a genuine query, no matter how basic it may seem, that could sound just a little bit dismissive. We want to be encouraging people, not frightening them away. After all, we were all innocent beginners once!

If the coins aren't worth a great deal to begin with then it's best not even to try. Cleaning - and even worse, polishing - coins will invariably do more harm than good and is not recommended for anything other than a coin of no collectable value if you insist on it looking nice and shiny. Beyond that it's the quickest way to devalue a coin.

That's absolutely true. What hits you is how ordinary it looks. Colin was quite happy to let me see it; on e advantage of being in touch with him is that you get to see quite a lot of things you can only dream about owning. BTW on eBay at the moment someone is selling what they claim to be an 1839 proof Manx farthing http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...ssPageName=WDVW

To the pure, all things are pure

Margaret Thatcher never lost an election. She resigned while her government was in office in 1990; the Conservatives went on to win in 1992 under John Major and then lost in 1997. The reason she resigned is that her own party realised she was a liability if they were going to win a further term of office, so they persuaded her to fall on her sword for the good of the party.

Because, young sir, some of us actually had to live during the Thatcher era. I think it can all be summed up in the claim that she made respectable those values which a civilised and morally repsonsible society should be ashamed of - things like greed, self-centeredness, lack of charity towards one's less fortunate fellows and a belief that rampant materialism is a good thing. This is a woman who claimed there was no such thing as society and even tried to rewrite the parable of the Good Samaritan to justify her rejection of its values. That says it all. I'm no fan of Mr. Blair but at least I think he retains some degree of humanity and compassion. Seven years ago many of us who were not habitual Labour voters saw him as a man who could overturn the wrongs of his predecessors. Alas, he has failed us in so many respects and presides over a Labour government further to the right than many of his Conservative predecessors.

I saw Colin's latest acquisitions in the flesh yesterday. Not sure of this was the piece of hammered gold he was displaying (I don't do hammered either), but he had an 1826 proof set to die for. That's where my sudden fortune might have gone.

I'd certainly second that. Edward VII silver is rising faster than British house prices at the moment. One reason I'm sure is that the low relief makes it that much harder to find coins in EF-UNC condiction. The 1902 crown in particular is getting increasingly difficult to come by in top grades and for the rest there's the added problem of low mintages, especially 1903-5. I'd also recommend earlier Victorian gold. Sticking with your original list, I'd go for the 3-sovereign set because of its classic design rather than the one-off Trevithick reverse £2.

There was some bumph from Coincraft in the post when I got back from a week away this evening, and that claimed that the sovereign alone from the Edward VIII proof set recently went for £100,000.

Earlier this year I received the 2004 bullion half sovereign. The other evening I was examining it and noticed that, compared to previous years, the reverse is noticeably weakly struck. Has anyone else encountered this or is mine just a one-off? Geoff

Even before the next round of countries join, the EU already has 16 members. The decision was taken when the last 4 joined to keep the number of stars at 12, so that the European flag is now more a symbol than an accurate representation of the number of members. I imagine it will stay that way on the Euro coins as well. Remember that membership of the EU doesn't mean that the relevant country uses the Euro. So far the UK, Denmark and Sweden are non-Euro EU countries. There's no correlation between the flag and countries in the Euro-zone.

Manchester Victoria was a noble monument to 19th century station building until they started to chop bits off. All the former Exchange Station platforms (the longest in the world when they were built) went when they built the Arena on top of them, and at the other end they converted rail platforms into Metrolink ones. With the propsed Metrolinisation of the line to Oldham it will presumably be reduced even further, and we'll lose the only station in the world named after a contagious disease. Still, they've kept that splendid Edwardian Art Nouveau buffet at Victoria. The new Piccadilly is a huge improvement on what was there before. They managed to get it all ready for the Queen's arrival to open the Commonwealth Games with literally minutes to spare. Oxford Road is probably irredeemable, although the 60s design is interesting. It was built largely of wood because of fear of land subsidence. Now Birkenhead Woodside - that was a fine station... PS - no I'm NOT a trainspotter. Those sort usually collect stamps.

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