Alex944

On 02/02/2022 at 22:28, James32 said:

Don't be too hard on yourself, it's all part of the learning process....a few weeks on here and you will likely see/buy everything you need.

I fully second this. Part of starting your stacking journey is also finding out that you may have purchased things you don't enjoy, and you may get into situations like this where you just aren't fully satisfied with your purchase. It can kinda blow, but in the same time it's a great experience in terms of deciding your next purchase (and where to purchase it from).

Personally, I think it's a good opportunity. This coin no longer carries a decent premium due to the indentation, so by all means, use it as a pocket piece. Holding an ounce of silver is a pretty nice thing, and you don't want to do that with some pristine coins that come in capsules. This is a nice piece to just play around with. almost all of my silver is in capsules or flips, apart from 5  1oz bullion krugerrands which accompany me on my desk. Expensive stressball but definitely does the trick.

I'd argue that this is a £120 minimum and around £200 maximum, of course a bit hard to tell from these pictures alone. It looks to be in great condition and with that presumption I would feel quite confident to ask between £150 and £180 for it. I've seen some examples sell on eBay between $250 and $300 so it could be slightly higher, but again quite quality dependent.  

16 minutes ago, theman73 said:

Hmmm

I tried on this coin but didn't got any results.

Any idea?

No luck for me so far. I am also unable to find anything remotely similar featuring Robert the bruce (either very old coinage or modern commemoratives that do not share similarity). Reverse image searching on Google also did not return anything similar to it. Is there any further information on the rim of the coin/medal? It may be that you have a medal (for lack of denomination) that is not well known, perhaps created by a private mint or something similar.

You are very welcome, hope you find something nice in there!

Hi,

It's a bit difficult to say just based on these pictures. Often you would be able to identify it pretty quickly just by the feel of the weight of the coin - silver is heavier than metal alloys like cupronickel and if you've had a silver coin in hand before, you tend to notice the difference straight away.

This is not always the case with lower purity coins (think <50% silver coins) and can be tough if you haven't really handled silver before. One of the way I usually check is by searching for the designated coin on Numista. A way to search is to Google some coin specifications and add ''numista'' at the end, which usually sends any Numista page right to the top of the search results. For instance, on the picture I see a loose coin (bottom right) that says ''twentieth anniversary of coronation - two dollars 1973''. Search for that on Google and add ''numista'' at the end, and here goes your search result: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces15743.html

So that specific coin seems to be silver, 25.7g of .925 to be precise. The only thing left then is to make sure that what you have on the table is the same as on the numista page; sometimes commemorative coins are created in both PM and non-PM, so things like weighing the coin or a diameter measurement comes in handy to confirm if you are not quite sure. It's a bit of a job but it's fairly accurate in lieu of actual testing with a device (like a sigma tester).

Hope that helps!

Definitely a shame. Some of the gold designs look amazing and this is a series that in terms of quality is really strong. The detail on background of the coins are so tight, it really is a piece of art as opposed to the majority of bullion and slightly premium coins nowadays. I hope the SA mint will reconsider. 

Welcome!

So one of the things to definitely consider is also the liquidity of your purchases, considering that your current stacking strategy of getting the cheapest ones (this may change over time, neither is right or wrong imo). What is important either way is the liquidity of your stack.

Say you have some bills to pay and you need to sell of some of your holdings, can you do this without issues? Certain coins are recognized around the world and will give you no trouble when it comes to sell, thinking of Britannia's, Philharmonikers, Kurgerrands, and to an extent i think the Goddess Europa and Bull&bear coin will be fine as well

Keeping in mind that you may have to sell when you don't want to, make sure you actually can sell part of your holdings. If you were to get certain silver pieces that are hard to shift, you may run into some issues. It's for this reason that I would stay away from bigger sizes initially. 1oz, 50g's or 100gs will be fine, but maybe shy away from the 10oz + sizes for the time being.

On a side note, I'll say that Europabullion and the Europeanmint are good for silver purchases. Europabullion is quicker in terms of delivery, but both have a good stock of items and are trust worthy. I have not purchased any items from Goldsilver.be, so I can't comment on that.

All the best,

Alex

The time is always right to do something new, welcome to the forum!

Thats not great news. Can I ask you where you heard that from; was it on the reply of the email that you sent?

I can confirm that the service from them is really good. They currently also have an option for deferred shipping so you can make (i think it's up to 5) orders in a 3 month period to be packed and shipped together in order to save on shipping. Not sure if they offer that for UK clients as well but worth to check out.

Well if it is genuine, you may have struck an absolute bargain. I would be a tad worried because of it though, the whole ''if it seems to good to be true'' type thing, but that doesn't mean you can strike gold sometimes. @Leonmarshhas a good taste in nice and older world coins, though I don't know if this is up his alley.

Fingers crossed, I really hope for you it turns out to be genuine!

Hi Bixley,

From my (relatively limited) research, this coin is very hard to obtain. I have seen two examples of coins being sold via a german dealer, one in a bit nicer grade was listed for around £16.000 and one that is slightly more comparable to your example here for about £10,500. I am not sure if that was their actual sale price but you can find them here for reference:

https://www.ma-shops.com/stuecker/item.php?id=2194
https://www.ma-shops.com/stuecker/item.php?id=999

There was one listed on ebay very recently but the sale has been ''ended'', which I'm not sure it means if it sold. Either way, that was listed for 19.500 EUR (about £16.500). Additionally I have seen a sale put up on a German dealer site for £8.800, though it does state ''Currently unavailable)

All in all, I think it's relatively safe to say that this coin doesn't really come up for less £8000-£10000. definitely a valuable piece you have over there.

** Edit - Based on the premise that this coin is indeed genuine, I did not check for that, rather just for reference. I am not knowledgable enough to confirm it's genuine or not. **

All the best,

55 minutes ago, paolo said:

I dont think that bank exist anymore, maybe under a new name 

Thanks again for your information. I checked and the BNU was merged with a different national bank in 2001. Since I haven't been able to find any mintage figures, I reached out to the bank that they merged with and requested some more information. Apart from requesting the mintage number, I also asked how these medallions were distributed; whether or not they were gifts to clients or if they were available by purchase. I will update this thread once I receive their feedback.

Appreciate your help on this.

Thank you @paolo  any idea on what a normal “mintage” would be of such medals? Contemplating if maybe reaching out to the BNU could give some more clarification. 
 

thank you for chiming in!

15 hours ago, sixgun said:

Notice the silver version is 50mm and the bronze version is said to be 80mm. So you can check whether it is silver or not.

Thank you for your input, i do appreciate it. It measures as 50mm in diameter so I’m quite sure it is the silver version

Hello Forum,

I picked up an interesting piece today, but I am not 100% sure on what it exactly is, so I was hoping you could shed some more light. For instance, I could not find it on Numista but that may be because I can't find the official name of this medallion.

It was made in 1964 by the BNU - Banco Nacional Ultramarino in Lisbon, as a commemoration of 100 years of overseas ''activities''. It weighs in at 65 grams and the composition is 0.925 silver.

Unfortunately the person in store did not speak english, and since I do not speak portuguese, I was unable to really ask any further questions, but it's definitely something out of the ordinary. Would any one happen to know some more info on this? For instance it's official name (numista page or something similar would be great) or mintage (not sure if thats the correct term for commemorative medallions)?

Any help is much appreciated. Pictures attached

All the best,

18 minutes ago, AndrewSL76 said:

For Forum members not fully tuned into the quirks of the Forum - if you put down naughty words the forum automatically changes them. So, for example, stating that someone has gone to another person's house to take a **** in the living room - will inevitably be changed to take a terrible in the living room.

It has been amended accordingly. what a terrible mistake  

Johnny, coming onto this forum and giving out to their members like this is a tad like going to someone elses house and take a terrible  S*** in the living room - you'll get a reaction out of the people there, though most of em will probably still think you're quite dim one way or the other, no matter how hard you shout that you aren't. I'll also kindly let you know that the amount of information on this forum that no one visits is more valuable than ANY information / description you will find on eBay. 

Also this is not doing great for your reputation on/off eBay, but that's your concern not mine. Stay healthy & all the best.

Presumably you mean the silver variant - In that case, I do not know. The Archosauria coins are part of the Natura collection which has been running since 1994, but they used to be in gold exclusively until 2019 when they released the silver Euparkeria coin and later the Coelophysis. 

The Archosauria part of the Natura collection in gold was released with 5 different coins in 2018:

Euparkeria (1/20oz) - 5R
Erythrosuchus (1/10oz) - 10R
Proterosuchus (1/4 oz) - 20R
Massospondylus (1/2 oz) - 50R
Coelophysis (1oz) - 100R

You can find the designs of all these here: https://www.samint.co.za/collectable-coins/product-archives/#tab-id-15 (click 2018 -> Natura)

Now for the silver ones, as far as I am aware they were looking to release these 5 in silver (1oz) as well, but staggered over a couple of years. So far the Euparkeria and Coelophysis have been released (both in 1oz and they come in blister cards), but further releases have not been made or announced, which is sad. I have both the silver coins and I can vouch for the fact that they look stunning. I really hope they'll release the other 3 as well.

Hope that answered some of your thoughts.

Thank you! I did not see that appear in filters initially but I did manage to find it. That's already quite helpful, much appreciated.

Good morning all,

Hope you are all keeping well!

I was curious to see what sources you check when you are looking for information about coins, specifically around what the (estimated) current market price is and how to find historical data of sales.

For example, if I wanted to look for a 1937 Half crown, I can check the specs and some info on Numista (great site), though the average values depicted there seem to be quite off. Of course I do check listings on Ebay but this always seems like a wildcard to me, I've seen horrible looking half crowns posted for £40 and ones that look pristine for as little as £8 (not auctioned but buy now price). Not that I necessarily intend to buy on Ebay, but it doesn't really help giving me a proper indication either.

My question is, how / where do you check this information? I'm talking half crowns at the moment and there's quite some out there, but I'm struggling with some slightly more uncommon coins to find places with historical sale data for instance.

All your information is greatly appreciated, thank you!

Alex

Thank you @arphethean, I do appreciate it. I'm a little apprehensive at the moment with ordering things from the UK into Ireland. On two recent occasions, items were held by Irish customs (Even though properly declared by UK sender) and then after about a week it would be sent back to the sender. Though in both occasions the items were indeed returned, it's a bit stressful to go through. However, if you did not have any issues with sending items to Ireland (or EU in general) recently, we can definitely discuss!

Hello everyone,

I was out on Holiday a couple of weeks back and while there, I found a nice antique shop in which I spend quite some time going over some older world coins. Where I live, antique shops tend not to have old coins and local coin shops just aren't really a thing.

I got back with a nice little bag filled with goodies, and among them are two half crowns in pretty good condition from 1940 and 1941. Though I had no intention of starting to collect them, I noticed that there's a nice small date run that I can look out for, being from 1937-1946.

My question is though - what is a decent place to source such coins? Unfortunately it'll be very tough for me to find them in a shop here, so I'll most likely have to resort to buying them online. I am not a big fan of Ebay for a variety of reasons and my usual dealers don't sell this type of older coins, so was hoping perhaps someone on the forum here has a recommendation of a place that I could check.

Appreciate any information shared!

The dragon bars are definitely something to get excited for. I think anyone into the stacking/collecting game still has that excitement for their purchases. If you don't feel it, it's probably not the right purchase

Early on in my stacking journey the best advise I had was ''know your exit strategy before buying something'' and that is really something to take into consideration. Gold and silver will always sell at a price, the question is only if you are happy with the price for which it sells. So in terms of purchases, if you are planning to hold for a considerable period of time (10+ years I'd say), it really doesn't matter that much what you buy as long as you enjoy it.

Now I've been dabbling a bit in buying silver/gold, and than trading off one of the two in favour of the other. In that regard, the higher liquidity the better, so sticking with popular bullion coins (Brits, Krugs, (half)sov's) is the way to go in my opinion. I've also bought a few  premium / collectable pieces for ''investment' purposes and I found it incredibly hard to shift them when I tried, despite some of these coins being absolutely amazing! But it taught me a good lesson about considering my purchases better. These have now been added to the long term stack and I'll figure out what to do with them in the years to come.

Bottom line really:

1) Know your exit strategy before buying
2) Short term buys - popular coins that are highly liquid
3) Long term buys - basically buy whatever you fancy 
4) Enjoy the hobby either way.