ColonialCoinsUK

Just wondered whether there were any plans for a mid-sized holder between the normal one and the oversized holder.

The reason is there are lots of medals with diameters between 45mm and 65mm and these are just a little too big for the normal holder and yet are completely swamped in the oversize holder (which also then takes up alot of space). Something which was suitable for upto 70-75mm would be great!

Thanks

There are a few extremely impressive lots which are in my area of interest and which I have only seen in reference books. I doubt I will be able fill the gaps in my own collection as I expect the estimates will mean they are worth more than my house, I did mention options to deal with this to my wife but she didn't say anything and just looked at me - I am going to take that as a 'no'

1 hour ago, GoldFinger1969 said:

Cited alot today ?  Wow...what coin(s) did it focus on ?  Surprised an auction catalog from 1927 would be cited today except in footnotes detailing a coin or type of coin's price trend.

Where was the bidding -- Ebay ?

The auction catalogue for 1927 for Prince d'Essling's collection on the coins & medals of the 1st Empire Napoleon I to Napoleon III - bought from an auction of numismatic literature. This gives the Essling/Ess/E numbers used for Napoleonic Medals.

The other references used for these are Bramsen (1907 which is actually an attempt to list these) and Julius (1932 which again is an auction catalogue of a private collection) which are the main ones but auction houses vary in terms of which and how many references they cite. As there are 1000's of Napoleonic medals none of these are complete and don't cover any of the restrikes which the Paris mint produced at various points - 1840's, post 1880, 1920's and 1970's.

My retirement project was to write the first proper reference book however enough collectors/auction houses have asked me so I have now started this - 20 year clock to publication is now ticking ! (Using auction house pics as there is no way of buying examples of them all and almost any examples in silver are way beyond my budget and the gold ones can be worth more than my house)

I seem to have 100's of auction catalogs - just highlights which coins I should have bought years ago - i.e. not the ones I did

I have just bought another one from 1927 which gets cited alot in current auctions (will probably not actually get it until the end of February though) and lost out on another one from 1959 which went for >5x estimate

Congratulations to all the winners - some amazing coins and sets, it just makes you want to collect everything!

This year my contribution has been a bit intermittent, and not as regular as I hoped, so another Journal Award from NGC was an extremely nice surprise. As @Star City Homer said 'real life' probably got in the way for most of us this year - personnaly everything seems to take much longer done remotely so it was good to get back to work as my day job really needs specialist facilities. Major post-COVID complications didn't help either so I won't be running anywhere for a while - not that anyone would notice the difference.

This has been a very interesting thread - although this is quite common for race horses, personally the only 'collective' investments I have are in real estate as I could only afford the deposit to buy a single property which increased the risk dramatically compared to spreading theinvestment out over 30 or so selected properties - plus this generates an income. There are several US platforms that allow this type of investment but only one decent one in the UK

A few years ago, here in the UK, Stanley Gibbons tried this for rare stamps and coins - having not heard anything for a while I guess it hasn't been very successful.

Hopefully I am allowed to add links??

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/8582410/Investors-warned-off-stamp-collectors-promise-of-rich-returns.html

(most of the above link is behind a paywall but there is enough to get the idea)

https://intelligent-partnership.com/AiR/reports/rare-stamps-and-coins-2015/rare-stamps-and-coins-2015/assets/common/downloads/Rare Stamps and Coins 2015.pdf

This is download of a PDF file which is interesting reading anyway concerning alternative investments.

You can also do something similar with whisky - personally I drink the stuff

https://www.whiskyinvestdirect.com/#

15 hours ago, World Colonial said:

No, you are not using it wrong.  I check both intermittently for numerous series.

Some countries are very well organized, like the UK, Mexico, Canada and South Africa.  As good as or better than NGC.  Better in the sense that it's easier to view denominations that NGC combines.

Others are as you state, no logical sense to the (lack of) organization at all.  Not only Spain but Peru, Bolivia, Chile... you get the idea.  Different dates for the same design and denomination are scattered.  I have also seen a few coins with multiple entries where it's necessary to add it up to come up with the total.  1770 Bolivia 4R is one.

I also prefer how NGC includes all grades in the same view.  With PCGS, you have to shift between pages.

I am going to guess that NGC's overall better organization might have something to do with the higher populations.  Auction archives can be equally challenging to navigate.  Much of it is the software but also how the firm decided to organize their database.  Overall, Heritage is best but they aren't going to go back and redo the data fields for world coinage to make it as searchable as US coinage.  Depending upon what I am looking for, a lot of unrelated entries show up in the results.

I am relieved it is not just me   I have also noted duplicate entries in the population reports. For world coins PCGS do seem to be better at adding well established variety information to the label though.

I too usually start with Heritage before moving on to Coinarchives, Sixbid, NumisBids, acsearch, specific auction houses etc. One lot I am currently considering states 'the second known example' and I know I have seen at least three!

As a collector of world coins, and it appears therefore I am in the minority , I have coins in both holders although more NGC. The main reason I use the NGC Registry is it is a convienent way to keep track of some of my collection although all the standard varieties etc are not always included, or recognised, in the Registry Set which is why for some things I have several sets. I think the PCGS World registry (apart from very select sets) is not as logical, complete or consistent as NGC is at the moment.

Compared to the NGC census I find some of the PCGS population reports extremely difficult to use as the entries are completely random with everything mixed up so you have to go through the whole lot to see what the population is for the coin you are interested in or even whether there are any graded example at all (for example Spanish coins, I could easily be using this wrong!).

On 5/13/2020 at 1:52 PM, World Colonial said:

I don't know which coins you are trying to find.  There are presumably tens of thousands of European from the 19th century.  The earlier ones should usually be (much) scarcer than later ones, those from countries with less collecting should also be (much) scarcer versus those with more (such as Britain and Germany) but many presumably had low mintages for the reason I gave you.

The situation probably applies to most European coinage apart from gold and selected crowns - including those from the German States. I tend to focus on France, Spain and Italy which seem to have a large collector base but still seem to be lacking in detailed information. Mintages are very variable and often very low - apart from the Paris mint even some Napoleonic issues are only in the hundreds - for example I have a AN13Q gold 20 Franc with a mintage of 516 (Le Franc).

Good luck with your pillar minors - fortunately the Napoleonic period is mainly Ferdinand VII which are much more available, particularly the final issues!

On 5/9/2020 at 7:35 PM, World Colonial said:

For the European coinage, it's my general belief that most Western post 1775 isn't that scarce, but some seem to be distinctly more common than others.  Example:  British seems to be a lot more common than contemporary Spanish, both absolutely and in equivalent quality.  Where the coinage is scarce, I would attribute it primarily to low initial mintages due to population and economics.  Examples of this would be Dutch provincial where each province potentially had around 100,000 near 1800.  (It's a "guesstimate", haven't looked it up.)  I would also expect many die varieties to be scarce for the same reason, along with the likelihood that collectors at the time didn't consider it important.

The more a look into individual issues for 1800's European coinage the more surprised I am how few examples seem to be around and even within that small group how rare mint state examples are - the exception being possible hoards. Yesterday I bought a coin in VF for which I have only been able to track down about 40 examples with about 4 in a similar grade and possibly only one coin better than this and that in AU. The vast majority of the others are good/poor and usually scratched and/or heavily cleaned, I can only hope that a quality example exists in a collection somewhere that eventually appears for sale. The current specialist price guides pretty much give the same info for each date and in all grades so are not even remotely representative  - the exception I would say are Gaduory and Le Franc for the French coinage where the guide does give the effective top grade available for each issue (not taking account of the odd stand out coin)

On 5/9/2020 at 7:35 PM, World Colonial said:

It also depends upon what you mean by "recorded".  The TPG data isn't representative since grading is not preferred in those countries and I doubt most of the better specimens are owned in the US.  It's more common for US collectors to own most (and sometimes probably all) of the better or even decent coinage from the developing countries since there is usually limited local organized collecting and only a limited market at (much) lower prices.

By 'recorded' I mean in auction records (I have 100's of actual catalogues and many more electronic only lists - coinarchives, sixbid archives and acsearch are also very useful - and quicker), dealers lists, museums and Ebay (surprising useful for the smaller denominations) and TPG populations but as you quite correctly point out most of these coins are ungraded so TPG examples only make up a small fraction of the coins documented - hence my surprise at the numbers of graded 1808M 20 Lire.

On 5/9/2020 at 7:35 PM, World Colonial said:

I would like to know what else is available in my primary series to potentially buy.  This is Lima and Potosi pillar 1/2R, 1R, 2R and 4R.  I have Gilboy's and Yonaka's books, the Patterson (1996 Bonham's) catalogue and have reviewed the ANS collection online (but not in person).  Yonaka includes survey data in his reference but it doesn't break it out by quality.  .

I am aware of your interest in the minor pillars and the searching it has taken and still does - I had considered something similar for the portrait issues, which although more available still presents serious challenges!

This is a very interesting thread and something I seem to spend much time looking into. I too noticed all the 1821 Guatemala 1/4 reales appearing over several weeks at Heritage, any details of the hoard? There appear to be some other dates/mints which have an unusually high number of mint state examples which would also suggest hoards, for example the 1811 4 and 8 reales struck in Valencia - I can't seem to find any details on a hoard for these - not surprisng though given the seige of the city by Napoleon's forces in 1812 - anyone?

As suggested there are usually high grade examples of most British and British colonial coinage available however for the other series I collect such a France, Spain and Italy of the Napoleonic period I have slowly (very slowly ) started to look into this in more detail. It has been surprising how little is recorded, how few mint state examples there are and also how 'rare' some of the issues appear to be particularly for the minor denominations.

For example part of my Journal Entry 'In Search of Varieities'

"Even though the 1808M issue has the second highest mintage of the short series at 87,183, and that it also has the most graded examples - 37 coins graded at NGC (VF to MS64) and 9 at PCGS (XF40 to AU58) it still does not appear very often. To complicate matters further there are 3 varieties of this coin - Type 1 which is extremely rare and Type 2 which is the version that is usually found. The Type 2 coins are further split into 2 varieties depending on the number of stars on each side of the standard on the reverse, one has 3 stars and the other 6, hopefully the attached scans highlight the difference between the two varieties. As I now have both of these varieties in my collection I decided to look into the possible populations and my research so far suggests that the existing population of Type 2 1808M 20 Lire coins is most likely less than 150 coins with VF being the typical grade encountered and that the 3 stars variety is about twice as prevelant as the 6 stars variety. Although both NGC and PCGS do not yet distinguish between these known varieties on the label what was surprising was that the vast majority of higher grade examples are already in TPG holders and that these also account for a significant portion of the existing examples! It should also be noted that, at the moment, I am only aware of a single mint state example, either raw or graded and that is the NGC MS64 '3 stars' example sold by Heritage in January 2015 for $3525, as this is way beyond my budget, and that it also has some light adjustment marks across the middle of the reverse, I am more than happy with my '2nd finest AU58' example."

Gold coinage seems to be more available and well documented compared to silver and copper issues, and in the several Journal entries (e.g. Collecting the Small Coins - Spanish Charles IV 2 reales) I have started to consider the smaller denominations of the period. As this study progresses it appears that some issues have very few recorded examples (<10) with no graded examples at all and that the finest documented may be VF. Although I expect, and hope, that quality coins are to be found in long-standing private collections (e.g. Journal Entry on the 1808I 10 centimes: If you wait long enough....) it does mean that some lower grade, problem free coins that I would have passed on at auction I now actively bid on as it may be the only chance to actually complete a set .

Fascinating - thankyou.

On reading this the strips of Charles I farthing tokens came to mind - although their production method is different. For an example see:-

https://www.colincooke.com/coin_pages/charlesi.html

22 hours ago, VKurtB said:

I'm more interested in a good U.K.-specific grading guide.

Apologies for any misunderstanding, 'Predecimal.com/Rotographic(coinpublications.com)' are the publishers of the Standard Guide to Grading British Coins.

6 hours ago, VKurtB said:

Do you suppose I will be able to pick up a copy of this book while I'm at the Bloomsbury Coin Fair in December?

You should be able to if Predecimal.com/Rotographic(coinpublications.com) are there, other dealers do stock their books too so, particularly the price guides, but it may be worth asking beforehand as they may not bring everything with them!

As I started as a collector of die numbered Victorian British sixpences there was often no choice but to have a low grade 'hole-filler' as another example may never appear, although I have drawn the line at holed or very damaged coins. Out of about 600 die numbers for the sixpence for the years 1864 to 1879 I have 'upgraded' about 20 coins or so over the years. As my collecting interests have expanded into world coins I have found the situation to be similar and have started to buy 'hole-fillers' here aswell as there may only be a handful of coins known and the highest graded (usually as a raw coin) being only VG or Fine. If the opportunity arises to upgrade I will try and do so but will live with 'hole-filler' until then!

As a collector, also based in the UK, I thought I would contribute to this thread - my Dad used to call the brass threepence 'shrapnel' as it was very heavy to have a pocket full of change and much preferred shillings and pennies instead, as a result we always had bags of brass 3d's which went back to the bank so people didn't have to carry them around!

Proofs were issued in sets in 1937, 1950, 1951, 1953 (plus special proofs from sand blasted dies) and 1970 which were available to the public, there are proofs for the other years but these are very rare and are often referred to a 'VIP proofs' although the term 'proof of record' has been used alot over the last couple of years, the Stacks example in this thread is one of these. Coincraft's Standard catalogue of English & UK Coins 1066 to Date has a full list, including the 'VIP Proofs'. It is only worth collecting Elizabeth II issues in Brilliant Unicirculated and these later dates are usually available for a $/£1 or so at the most and some coin dealers here in the UK will sell them by the bagful which would work out at about 10 pence each which is why there are very few graded examples of these coins - the rare 1946 and 1949 issues being the exception.

The 1965 example in this thread is a circulation issue and damaged resulting in verdegris on the surface (which can have slightly different colours and change with time and the conditions the coin is kept in) and is effectively worthless. I can recommend 'The Standard Guide to Grading British Coins' by Derek Allen as I have found this useful of the years - now seems to be available in paperback.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Standard-Guide-Grading-British-Coins/dp/0948964561/ref=asc_df_0948964561/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310977525294&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=4689948517733290315&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006659&hvtargid=pla-628664944557&psc=1&th=1&psc=1