Geoff T

Yet with some silver the opposite is true. Although 1915 was a high mintage year for half crowns, it's still remarkable how many from the war years turn up in top grades. A friend of mine has a theory that the higher value coins were given as keepsakes when new by men going off to the front. In cases where they never returned alive, the coins might have been treasured as a tangible link. An interesting theory, anyway. G

Another Cancerian! Happy birthday! G (still a 40-something for another week )

The first question here is "which 1862". The reason why certain rupee dates are very common is that it was standard practice at this time, once a coin was struck, to go on striking it with the same date regardless of the year. There are clues to when - and where - a coin was actually struck but they are subtle things, like patterns of dots on the reverse, mint marks and privy marks hidden in the obverse design. Because they were minted in such huge numbers, rupees in top grades turn up quite regularly. Assuming yours is around EF, then the going price is around the £10 mark. They are beautiful coins, and a nice sideline if your main interest is British coins. Hope this helps - Geoff

Presumably this brain-dead pond life hasn't noticed that the coins in his/her pocket (or the bits of change that come when they cash their Giro) also have Latin on them. The really sad thing is that this person is probably no ignorant kid but an adult, no doubt with kids of their own called Kaylee and Jordan, a white van and who watches - nay, videos - Celebrity Love Island from the comfort of a council house living room furnished by MFI to the accompaniment of lukewarm kebabs and even more lukewarm lager. Snob - moi? (It's OK Chris, I've ditched that wallpaper since you visited )

I'm afraid it's non-value. The 1953 florin (2 shillings) might fetch a couple of quid if it's in a high grade, but the 1966 is very common and the two decimal coins are just the old, larger style ones which were introduced to be the same size as and therefore interchangable with the shilling and florin. In top grade you're looking at about 50p for each. A bank will give you face value for all of these coins. BTW, none of them is silver - they're all cupro-nickel. Silver went out for circulating currency in 1947. Hope this is useful - Geoff

Alistair, Sorry to disappoint, but from the pictures I think it's fair to say that none of these coins is really worth anything other than a few pence. There's nothing out of the ordinary there, and most of the coins have seem a lot of wear, with some having developed verdigris. Excerpt for obvious rarities, the condition of a coin is more important to a collector than its age. However, thank you for your enquiry and don't hesitate to get back to us with any further questions. You'll also find a lot of useful information elsewhere on the site which could be helpful to a beginner collector. Geoff

That means it was minted in Melbourne. At the height of the empire we set up colonial mints in places where there was a supply of gold. Melbourne, Sydney and Perth all had their own mints, as did - eventually - Ottawa and Pretoria.

Happy birthday Kuhli Geoff

I think he means 1892 was a rare year for florins aka 2 shilling pieces. G

While I'd agree with the sentiments above, I'd just issue a caveat that you'll need to make sure of the legalities of importing that amount of gold into the UK. I'm not at all sure if there are restrictions but it would be wise to check first that HM Customs & Excise aren't going have an issue, or that neither does the country they're being exported from for that matter. Geoff

There are numerous reasons why the whole idea of slabbing turns me off, but surely the most important is that coins are a tactile thing. We handle them every day, and even if they're rare or valuable we want to be able to experience them through touch as well as sight. I think "coffin" is the right term; a slabbed coin is a dead coin. G

Seriously, there are areas where we legitimately need to rethink our language because in the past we have used terms which did cause offence. It isn't much fun being called nigger, spacky or queer, or even being addressed as a fireman when you're quite obviously a firewoman. However, there's a whole area of imposed language based on assumptions of offence taken, and that really does annoy me. This is the situation where someone who isn't, for example, deaf, tells people who are that they shouldn't use the term "deaf" but refer to themselves as hearing impaired. The usual response is a blunt "**** off, we'll call ourselves what we like." There was an incident a couple of years ago where a local council banned an advertisement for a carol service in the grounds that it might offend a large Muslim community, but nobody bothered to ask that community its views and the reponse of members when interviewed by the BBC was that they didn't mind at all. Round here there are schools who won't celebrate Christmas or Easter but who do mark importnant non-Christian festivals. This isn't multi-culturalism so much as replacing one mono-culturalism with another. There is, of course, the whole issue of minorities reclaiming language once deemed offensive and using it as a kind of in yer face label - "I can call myself nigger/queer/spacky/paki because I am one, but you can't because you're not". This follows the same rule that it's offensive to tell Jewish jokes unless you're Jewish. Isn't it always the grey areas which are most interesting? PC originated in the same part of the world as slabbing - or is that a racist remark? G

I still do not like that word. It's as bad as babe or chick. But it is non-gender specific if we're being PC about all this. Can't be making assumptions about the sex of a 16 year old or the person they might cop off with, can we? I don't think the average straight female or gay male teenager is that interested in either babes or chicks - unless they're training for a career in midwifery or live on a poultry farm. Happy Birthday all the same! This is an equal opportunites greeting which does not discriminate on grounds of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability. G

Yeah, but I still fall off when it goes round corners

Yes, the child was a boy, but it's likely that he couldn't have succeeded to the throne of Hannover as his descent would still have been in the female line through Charlotte. So it would have been Uncle Ernst after all, but if Charlotte had lived and married to Leopold would the English crown have been united with what eventually became the Belgian one? It's said that Charlotte's death was partly of her own making. She dismissed all of her physicians who wanted to intervene except one whom she trusted - and the rest is history. When word got out that he had been implict in her death he killed himself six months later. Others who might have stood in the way of Victoria are the two daughters of William IV - Elizabeth and Sophie - who died in infancy. One of the big "ifs" is what if Arthur, elder brother of Henry VIII, had lived to succeed Henry VII? Would the English reformation have been avoided or would the forces of change have made their way to England anyway? It might well have been that, if a religious reformation was inevitable, then Lutheran rather than Calvinist thinking would have gained the upper hand here. And if, given Arthur's death, Edward VI had lived and produced heirs, would the Calvinist streak in English protestantism have become yet more marked, with no Elizabethan compromise to check it? As for Arbella Stuart - that's a line from "1066 and all that" - essential reading for all those who know the history it parodies. She was a descendant of the Earls of Lennox, from the same family as Henry, Lord Darnley, husband of Mary I of Scots and a strong claimant to the Scottish throne in his own right. G

It's only a Fiat Punto but I love it to bits. I got it brand new on 1 March and there's nothing can beat the ego trip of bombing down the motorway and being the only 05 reg car you see all day. It's called Huxley after the XLY in the registration number. I also have a basset horn called Harley. Now, that's my real mid-llife crisis toy. As a clarinettist I'd wanted a basset horn (a lower pitched clarinet) since I was in my teens, but they don't come cheap and so I always borrowed one when I needed it. Problem was, it was a crap instrument and when it packed up in a concert for the umpteenth time I made a vow that if a decent second-hand or sale price one came along I'd go for it. A week later it did - brand new in a sale by the country's top dealer - and, reader, I bought it. It was a moment of pure, trancelike retail therapy when you can barely hear the voices saying "should I be doing this", matched only by the occasion when I bought that Cromwell medal from Colin Cooke. Other men are supposed to confront their mid-life crisis by buing a motorbike. I bought a basset horn - called Harley. G

Am I the only person in the country who has never seen any of the Star Wars films? G

I have seen a Scottish coronation medal for Edward VII the legend on which pointedly indicated that he wasn't Edward VII of Scots. When the present Queen came to the throne new post boxes were installed in Scotland with the royal cypher E II R. The Scots complained the she wasn't Elizabeth II of Scots, which is why all subsequent Scottish post boxes simply have the Scottish crown with no cypher. That still doesn't answer the question as to why we don't count our pre-1066 Edwards in our conventional ordinal numbering. Is this a case of us paying second fiddle to the French? The Old Pretender, BTW, is buried in St. Peter's Rome in an eleborate tomb with an inscription which refers to him as James III. (And how can you be so numb and vague about Arbella Stuart? ) G

It has to be the half crown. They're chunky and tactile and I have fond memories of spending them. Those of George IV and William IV have such splendid reverses and the size really does justice to obverse portraits. G

This has reawakened something which has crossed my mind on a number of occasions, usually when I show people undenominated coins and they say "but how do you know the value?". Is the use of undemoninated circulating coins a wholly British thing? Gold coinage is undenominated as well yet circulated internationally. Is this another example of the chauvinistic attitude which believed that what we produced would be recognised anywhere simply because it was British? There's a parallel here in the fact that we have never indicated the country of origin on our postage stamps. G

In uncirculated condition these go for around £3-£4, a little more if they're proofs from sets. They're all £2 coins issued principally as commemoratives prior to the introduction of the circulating £2 in 1998, but they are all legal tender at face value of £2. There are two 1989 coins: one celebrating the tercentenary of the Bill or Rights in England, the other, less common one, the Claim of Rights in Scotland. Geoff

I heard the news last Sunday at Wakefield and rang Chris that afternoon. Many of us at Wakefield knew Colin personally so the news cast a shadow over the whole event. I was completely stunned. We have to be positive though. Although Colin's death is a great blow to the coin world the expertise he leaves behind him is something which we must all be grateful for. I have no news yet as to what is happening to his business but I'll keep people informed as soon as I know more. Geoff

The new design was introduced for gold and silver coins in 1887 for the Queen's golden jubilee and the obverse (heads) has the so-called jubilee head. It was replaced in 1893 by the old head, sometimes referred to as the veiled or widow head (although Victoria had been a widow since 1861). 1887 coins are very common as large numbers were minted. The value of your shilling will depend on its condition, which can be assessed if you post a picture. The only really rare coins from 1887 are the proofs, of which some 1300 sets were issued. Geoff

True UK independence is as much about independence from Washington as it is from Brussels. Why is UKIP so silent on the former? G

I watched this and found it quite amusing. The clothes, the cash registers - Green Shield stamps! I can well remember the suspicion decimalisation aroused in the minds of consumers, particularly the elderly. Some really did refuse to think decimally, even after D-Day, and there were shopkeepers who played along with this, refusing to price things in "funny money" in a way which recalls the so-called metric martyrs of more recent experience. The following contemporary overheard sums up beautifully the attitude of some people, and will be particularly amusing to those who know their geography of Lancashire:- "It may be alright for Wigan but it'll never catch on in Standish". G