Underweight 1903 halfpenny

[coinan the barbarian 0]

Hello everybody,

I am a relative newbie who picked up the following coin in a small collection I purchased. It is a 1903 halfpenny, in EF to Unc condition (some small scrapes on the rim) It appears to be blackened at the mint. Really superb condition in every respect. BUT it is underweight at 5.21gms rather than the 5.67gms. Diameter is spot on at 26mm. I have attached an image, but it's not brilliant and I have had to play around with the contrast to make anything visible. Your views as to its validity and even its worth would be most welcome.

[Rob 3,152]

Hello everybody,

I am a relative newbie who picked up the following coin in a small collection I purchased. It is a 1903 halfpenny, in EF to Unc condition (some small scrapes on the rim) It appears to be blackened at the mint. Really superb condition in every respect. BUT it is underweight at 5.21gms rather than the 5.67gms. Diameter is spot on at 26mm. I have attached an image, but it's not brilliant and I have had to play around with the contrast to make anything visible. Your views as to its validity and even its worth would be most welcome.

Corroded? If so the fabric of the coin has probably been attacked under acidic conditions. Value negligible, i.e. scrap.

[azda 979]

EF-UNC? From the picture i'd say Fine grade

[TomGoodheart 403]

EF-UNC? From the picture i'd say Fine grade

Indeed. Either the grading is waaaay off, or you need to show us a proper sharp photo I'm afraid. From what you've said I'd expect it to look more like this:

Does it?

[Paulus 1,975]

EF-UNC? From the picture i'd say Fine grade

You're being too harsh I think it's a Good grade!

[coinan the barbarian 0]

Hello again,

I have already apologised for my photography and sadly this was the best I could do. The coin is NOT corroded. Every hair on Edward's head and beard is visible, every fold of cloth on Britannia, etc, etc. From my knowledge of acid treatments in another field, it would have destroyed features as well as the body of the coin, I believe. I also have to consider one other aspect - why would anyone deliberately acid attack and then blacken a 1903 half penny? By the way, my definition of EF was taken from Collector's Coins and maybe I am interpreting the English incorrectly, but I think not. So back to the original question, or rather shall I pose two new ones - 1. Do underweight coins slip through and are there any records of such for Edward VII half pennies? 2. Is there any record of a 1903 half penny being blackened at mint? Any help would be grately appreciated

[azda 979]

Best posting a new oicture because yours definately does'nt Look EF from your picture. So, judging from the other commenr "did any get Out" you're hoping its an error worth cash? I'd go with Robs theory of acid

[pies 33]

Im thinking its been in an powerful ultrasonic bath,this will errode and possibly blacken

[Peter 615]

Hello everybody,

I am a relative newbie who picked up the following coin in a small collection I purchased. It is a 1903 halfpenny, in EF to Unc condition (some small scrapes on the rim) It appears to be blackened at the mint. Really superb condition in every respect. BUT it is underweight at 5.21gms rather than the 5.67gms. Diameter is spot on at 26mm. I have attached an image, but it's not brilliant and I have had to play around with the contrast to make anything visible. Your views as to its validity and even its worth would be most welcome.

Don't kid yourself.It is scrap at best.

[coinan the barbarian 0]

Hello again,

Thanks for the help and advice. I am more than happy to go with the ultrasonic bath and keep the coin as a filler until I find a valid replacement. I didn't join this forum just to get cheap shots about my photography or about my ability or not to grade coins or to get values for "rarities". I joined for advice and perhaps even a little hand holding and mentoring from experts. When you next chat to a self confessed newbie I would advise some of your expert just to remember where the newbies are coming from.

Perhaps one more question on this thread - how did the mint blackening process work? I have been unable to find anything on the net about it. Was it a heat treatment?

Best regards,

Garry

[ski 1]

i think the replies offered here have been good, people have stated its difficult to grade from the pics, if help is needed in getting better pics and so enabling better valuations.......

there are some brilliant photos on here that make grading easy.....take advantage and ask all sorts of questions

[azda 979]

Being a newbie and asking advice is fine. When you don't heed the advice then you are basically saying you know better. Tomgoodheart posted a halfpenny picture of an EF and asked if it was the same.

I gave you my opinion of Grade from your picture, but you said it was your picture that was crap, personally i still think its the coin. If you want to heed opinion as a newbie then great stuff, if not and you think long time collectors are wrong then u think you will fall very quickly. Advice has been given, if you'd like to prove us/me wrong then please post a better picture so we can more accurately grade and and see why it would be underweight.

Just my opinion again but i doubt an ultasonic cleaner however powerful could reduce the weight of a coin.

[SEnumis 0]

To answer your question about darkening a coin there are a number of different treatments, although some are metal specific. I know that farthings were darkened to prevent confusion with sovereigns when sovs were still (almost) circulating currency. I do not have access to one of my dad's books (a schoolbook called 'metalworking) but this has details of how to colour metal using different treatments. I hope this is helpful.

[Peter 615]

Hello again,

Thanks for the help and advice. I am more than happy to go with the ultrasonic bath and keep the coin as a filler until I find a valid replacement. I didn't join this forum just to get cheap shots about my photography or about my ability or not to grade coins or to get values for "rarities". I joined for advice and perhaps even a little hand holding and mentoring from experts. When you next chat to a self confessed newbie I would advise some of your expert just to remember where the newbies are coming from.

Perhaps one more question on this thread - how did the mint blackening process work? I have been unable to find anything on the net about it. Was it a heat treatment?

Best regards,

Garry

You are welcome to to the forum.

The coins blackend were mainly farthings so they could not be passed off as sovereigns.You can buy BU halfpennies.

One of the dates to look for are 1918 farthings produced in BU and darkened.

Feel free to ask questions....we are a friendly lot but with bank holidays and extra stress...I'm heading for my pills

Edited August 27, 2012 by Peter

[TomGoodheart 403]

I think the best idea Garry would be to take another photo of your coin, as sharp and large (as in megapixels) as you can. Upload it onto a photohosting site such as photobucket or flickr as links to those don't have the size restrictions that apply to photos uploaded from your computer/phone.

You can post the link to the url, or coding it [ img].. [/ img] directly as an image (the site resizes photos to a convenient size itself) within a post. Use macro if you have it so you don't have too much background.

Don't manipulate the image at all (though use artificial light if needed to show the details). That way members here can fiddle around with the original image to their heart's content and give you a better idea as to what they think.

As an aside, can I ask how you weighed the coin and whether you used another of known weight for comparison? It would be daft if the coin was ok and only underweight because of a quirk of the scales. Of course, you may have done this already, in which case I apologise!

As to the blackening, I'm no expert but coins can darken naturally depending on the conditions they were stored in. Maybe it wasn't a mint process that caused this coin to darken? Either way I'm sure members will be pleased to help you figure it out.

Edited August 27, 2012 by TomGoodheart

[coinan the barbarian 0]

Hi Again,

It's me after a minor rant - put it down to a bad hair day - funny how you spot all of your typos when you are much calmer.

First, let me apologise to those I may have offended. I used to moderate a couple of lists on Masonic jewels (medals) and Masonic ephemera and when I made a point about newbies and what they look for, I had returned to a previous life. I should have also looked at the advice being given - mea culpa!

To answer one question about weighing, I used jewellers electronic scales and weighed an EF halfpenny which hit the right weight before weighing the dreaded underweight black thing.

To answer the question about comparison with the excellent BU photo posted for comparison, my black thing is just as detailed and without blemish as the BU but it is matt black.

So - I am going off to learn to photograph coins with my cheap camera and hopefully will post to this thread again with a decent picture.

Thanks for the help so far!

Yours, no longer grumpy or self indulgent and looking forward to participating further in an excellent forum,

Garry

[ski 1]

i can vouch for the expert advice here, ive learnt much here......while your away learning about your camera, remember the stunning coin photos here....theres good people here who can help you improve with the humblest of cameras.

ski

[pies 33]

If you have a scanner you can get some pretty good photos on them for zero effort

[coinan the barbarian 0]

Hello again,

Tried the scanner to no avail, but managed to play around with the camera and came up with this one. All advice and comment gratefully received!

Garry

[ski 1]

a vast improvement.....the coin is clearly more detailed than the original pics showed. maybe a little more light on the subject and a larger sized image would further improve youre image.

ski.

[Peckris 579]

Hello again,

Tried the scanner to no avail, but managed to play around with the camera and came up with this one. All advice and comment gratefully received!

Garry

Yes, that appears to be around EF grade, much better than your first picture, though still a little on the dark side. ("Luke...hsssssss hhhhhhssssss....I am your father, Luke...hhhhssssss"). From what I can see, the darkening looks very similar to that handed out to farthings between 1897 and 1917. That was done at the Mint using a bath of photographer's 'hypo'. As to your coin, either this was darkened in error at the Mint, or someone took a coin barely circulated and subjected it to the same treatment, post-Mint. That would be my theory anyway. It has the giveaway 'blue' tinge that hypo-treated coins have.

I can't comment on the lightness, but do bear in mind that all coins have an upper and lower range within which their weight can fall. I really don't know if yours falls within that band or not. Someone with greater knowledge will comment on that.

[azda 979]

Was going to try and play around with the uploaded picture but it won't do much more than has already been uploaded. Now that you've kinda sorted the photo issue out i would agree that its a better grade than what we first encountered in the first picture. You need to invest in a camera, thos fangle digi things cost about 100 quid for something decent and you'd be amazed at the results you get. Here's one of my shots from a simple Olympus 8.0 Million mega pixel camera, marco setting and highest resolution

[coinan the barbarian 0]

The blueish tinge was also in the air after the 93rd setting of the camera with no instructions! But I got there and sometimes small is beautiful or at least I consider that picture a minor personal triumph, though it is nowhere near the magnificance of azda's accomplished work.

So next question, O wise ones, what are the weight tolerances for minted coins or more specifically, does anyone have any idea what they were in 1903, based upon personal experience, anecdote or fact?

I presume that they were more tolerant in 1903 than today as the technology wasn't around to pull out the underweights either pre or post production through automation - don't know if automated weight checks take place today, but it would certainly be possible - so, I am guessing that quality control on weight in 1903 probably came in the form of bulk weight (bagged) within tolerances rather than individual coin weight. Potentially, there was no post production control, only pre-production.

All comments most welcome!

Garry

[Rob 3,152]

The blueish tinge was also in the air after the 93rd setting of the camera with no instructions! But I got there and sometimes small is beautiful or at least I consider that picture a minor personal triumph, though it is nowhere near the magnificance of azda's accomplished work.

So next question, O wise ones, what are the weight tolerances for minted coins or more specifically, does anyone have any idea what they were in 1903, based upon personal experience, anecdote or fact?

I presume that they were more tolerant in 1903 than today as the technology wasn't around to pull out the underweights either pre or post production through automation - don't know if automated weight checks take place today, but it would certainly be possible - so, I am guessing that quality control on weight in 1903 probably came in the form of bulk weight (bagged) within tolerances rather than individual coin weight. Potentially, there was no post production control, only pre-production.

All comments most welcome!

Garry

I don't have any figures for halfpenny weight distributions, but a few years ago when discussing as to whether you could differentiate between metals in the case of wren farthings, the sample I checked had a mean weight of 2.82g and a distribution of 0.36g around this mean, but I can't remember if the sample size was big enough to be statistically significant. The figure suggested somewhat in excess of 10% variation, i.e +/-5-6%. This compares well with the range quoted in Peck and the official weight which was 40 pence per pound or 87.5 grains. Halfpennies were also struck to the same standard, i.e. an official weight of 5.6699 grams, but the range quoted by Peck is only about 5% (+/-2.5%). Accordingly, your halfpenny would be outside these limits at just over 8% underweight. Possibly a wrong flan, but inconclusively so unless you can find a type struck at the mint in 1903 to this weight.

Edited August 28, 2012 by Rob

[coinan the barbarian 0]

Thank you all for responding and especially to Rob who has given me that which was sought - some idea of variance percentages. I will now record my EF-ish black thing in my collection as a possible underweight flan and look for another 1903 specimen. Thanks for putting up with an old newbie.

Just as an aside - Ebay bargains do come along more than once. I have just picked up a 1876H narrow date (definitely at least fine condition) in with a load of other Victorian coins which although most of the others are at best fine, they fill gaps (and I'm a bit of a completer). I'm doing the lottery this weekend on the basis of luck coming in threes!

Thanks again for your help on the "black thing" subject.

Garry