GoldStatue

Its king Charles birthday today he's 74. You'd have thought they might have released the sovereigns today?

Is anyone else confused as to why the Mint are calling these a "Memorial Sovereign"? There is nothing about QEII on them.
 

That's what I initially thought, it's a memorial coin for Charlie boy taking the crown, but in the write up on the website they actually say it is poignant tribute for QEII and wouldn't that be a commemorative.
Possibly the Royal Mint marketing team have tried to play the QEII sympathy card to sell this one and not realised what is on the product 😀
My money is on "The Coronation Sovereign 2023" to be released in May next year with a special reverse.

It’s by birthday today and it feels like it!  Been waiting ages to get these! 

Not received today, more like this month. 3 small but beautiful gold coins.. 
A 2021 1/10oz brit (my first one, i am now addicted to 1/10s).
A 2009 1/4 sov.
And finally a bi-metallic gold proof "1/8 sovereign", courtesy of @Solachesis

I think if the JC design is correct from a few pages back, the mint caught us all out. I spent ages replacing the Queens crown with the Kings Crown which most of us had presumed would be present on the Royal Coat of Arms. So in theory by still showing the QEII cpat of arms it becomes a Memorial Sovereign - I think?

That's what I initially thought, it's a memorial coin for Charlie boy taking the crown, but in the write up on the website they actually say it is poignant tribute for QEII and wouldn't that be a commemorative.
Possibly the Royal Mint marketing team have tried to play the QEII sympathy card to sell this one and not realised what is on the product 😀
My money is on "The Coronation Sovereign 2023" to be released in May next year with a special reverse.

I think those Harry Potter coins are aimed more for the gift giving market than for the hardcore Potheads or coin collectors.
The Royal Mint must have paid a pretty penny to put that franchise on coins!

Is anyone else confused as to why the Mint are calling these a "Memorial Sovereign"? There is nothing about QEII on them.
 

Because it can make £££

Clearly the next smart move by the mint would be to make a Harry Potter sovereign.

The actions of a man who already knows he's going to buy something expensive and is now working his way backwards to justify spending the money 🤣 
 I hope you don't mind me copying your work if I have to explain 6 grand going out the bank account on Tuesday

It's been a terrible year for the flippers selling below issue price.
I know TSF members are a compassionate lot.
Christmas is just round the corner.
I am providing a room for a flipper over Christmas and I hope other members will consider doing the same.

HP may be popular, but not all Harry Potter fans collect coins. And like any mega franchise, Harry Potter has a terrible load of merchandise already which hardcore fans have been collecting for years.
The overlap between HP fans and coin collectors may be smaller than we think.

Been doing some paper workings out and random number crunching and brain droppings in light of Tuesdays launch and drawing some comparisons, so thought i'd share them 

Need to catch up on this week's arrivals.  Firstly from the redoubtable @James32, these two.  I now have 3 out 10.  No rush to finish this collection, on the grounds that I like living in a house...
Can't decide whether the Griffin or the Falcon are my favourite designs.  I guess the Griffin, because I have one.  😁

This Yale needs to teach its younger brother from the Tudor Beasts some grooming tips, because this one's a looker.

Thanks 🙂

My plan for next year is 2oz gold & 1kg silver.

I've nearly got enough for the first 1/4oz of gold already.

I feel like I have picked up so many interesting coins (most are stack ones, but I also have a small list of coins I want to keep forever & got a couple of those, but no rare ones as of yet) in just one year - it's hard to believe this time last year the only coins I had were the change I kept to tip deliveroo & taxi drivers.

Got the itch again

 

Hi
This topic was inspired by comments from @theman73 and @Silverlocks.
To summarise: trying to use a close-focusing telephoto lens to photograph coins.
I have no idea how much you know about photography, so I will try to stay fairly basic.  Some of what I say will not be 100% correct, as I may miss out scenarios and exceptions to rules.  I welcome people correcting / augmenting my description in the comments.  This topic is not meant to be a general tutorial on how to take photos of coins.
Definitions
(Feel free to skip if you are familiar with the terms.)
Basically, aperture is how wide open the lens is.  It is controlled by a diaphragm inside the lens that blocks the light.  Sometimes this is fixed (most mobile phones), but sometimes it can vary.  Confusingly, the wider the aperture, the smaller the f-stop number.  f/1 is wide and lets in a lot of light, f32 is narrow and lets in a tiny amount of light.
Put simply, depth of field is how much of a scene is in focus.  A wide depth of field means both close and distant things are in focus.  This is what most 'snappy' cameras and mobile phones want to achieve most of the time, because it's easy - when photographing groups of people, buildings and landscapes, you want everything in focus.  A narrow depth of field means only a small 'range of distances' is in focus.  This is useful for isolating subjects, like in portrait photography. 
Optically, depth of field is relative to the f-stop when the photo is taken, and that is determined by the ratio of aperture diameter (how wide open the lens is) to focal length (how long the lens is).
The problem
Mobile phone cameras have a relatively small diameter and therefore aperture.  Normally, because the focal length is also pretty small, this leads to a kind of average f-stop of f/5.6 to f/11.  This is a really useful range of apertures, and means that for most photography, most subjects are in focus and most backgrounds are pleasantly blurred.
However, strapping a great big telephoto lens on the front means a small aperture coupled with a long focal length, which gives you a very small (high number) f-stop, say f/22 to f/32.  So, you are not getting much light onto the sensor.  To compensate for that, the phone will either decrease the shutter speed or increase the ISO (sensitivity), or both.  Decreasing shutter speed leads to camera shake and motion blur, unless you are using a tripod.  Increasing ISO leads to noisy photos and loss of detail.  Also, having such a small f-stop has its own problems, as your lens starts to act as a diffraction grating, and you get blur.
With such a small aperture, you would think that your depth of field would be pretty good.  However, at macro sizes, your depth of field will still, at best, be a couple of millimetres.  And that is only if you can get the phone to accurately focus with a third-party lens strapped to it.
Put simply, there is no way a phone with a telephoto lens is going to match even the cheapest DSLR or Mirrorless camera with a macro lens.  Physics just gets in the way at every turn.  A lens and sensor that is 3mm across vs a lens that's ~60mm and sensor that's 35mm - no competition.
What I would do
Honestly, if your phone has a half decent camera on it with a high enough pixel count and good macro focusing (ultrasonic), take the lens off, hold the camera about 6-12 inches away from the coin, and take a photo.  Even better, use a tripod, use manual settings to control the shutter speed and ISO, and that should sort out the camera shake issue too.  Your coin will look tiny in the photo, but then crop it down - you have the megapixels to do it.
How could it work?
If you are thinking of buying a macro or close-focus lens for your phone, think long and hard.  If you must, buy one from an established lens manufacturer, not a cheap plastic thing from Amazon.  Optical quality makes a difference, and the example photos on Amazon are almost certainly fake.
With or without a third-party lens, here are some tips:
Use a modern phone.  Something at the top of the range from the last 5 years or from a mid-range in the last 2 years.  You need a high pixel count if you want to crop photos, and you need reliable focusing. Use a tripod.  You can get pretty cheap mobile phone tripods.  Get a metal one, not plastic, from a good tripod make.  Plastic ones will be useless, and a waste of money. Use manual photo mode on the phone.  Keep the shutter speed above 200 for hand-held.  Let the ISO go wild - see post-processing.  Take lots of photos and see what works - digital photos are free. Control the lighting.  Precious metals reflect everything.  If you can, build or buy a lightbox - a box about 1-2 feet on every side, with one side open for you, and drape some black cloth over the front to avoid light coming in.  Use a flash or torch or some kind of light you can position.  Lighting is a huge topic on its own. Learn how to do basic post-processing of photos.  Find software that will remove noise from high ISO photos, and can crop and straighten images.  I recommend G.I.M.P. which is free and has a lot of open-source community support.

It says on the website 15th November 9am, bit weird as that is a Tuesday.

suprise delivery all 999 fine 
I'm lost for words on this delivery from @Gold Spartan. the master chief is incredible. The Phoenix piece I asked to be made from an idea I had in my head as a memorial to my Mum who passed away around this time last year. He has gone above and beyond and done me and my mum proud and literally brought a tear to my eye today. I cannot recommend and thank him enough ❤️💘
 
2022-11-11-144343160.mp4

Impressionist silver... could be an untapped market opportunity to sell pretentious dross to loaded tosspots!

No I haven’t seen any other Proclamation that could be for Sovereigns except this one.
I think I assumed this one was for the 2023 Sovereign, since we all expected it to be released at the end of this year; but the “memorial 2022” concept seems to have taken us all by surprise.
I expect they will do the standard St. George and the Dragon for the 2023 Coronation Sovereign, and even if they don’t, there will have to be another Proclamation for it… unless the 2023 Coronation Sovereign also happens to have yet another “Coat of Arms” reverse design, in which case this Proclamation will cover the specifications for it.

That information is under embargo unfortunately.

"Welcoming His Majesty The King onto its obverse and paying tribute to the remarkable reign of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II"
So in that case, is it reasonable to expect the reverse design to be an exact copy of the Platinum Jubilee edition?
In theory then, it shouldn't be the Charles version of the Royal Arms if there is such a thing.
Talk about milking it, and is it likely to adversely  impact on the current value of said 2022 Platinum version?