RDHC

I will take this, please, if it has been carefully stored e.g. in an acrylic container, not a plastic flip (as well as handled only with gloves).

I must be very dim but I hardly understand a word of this. I expect that it would be to my benefit to do so, therefore could you or some other kind soul please explain it all to me?

You could do worse than start by looking at the detailed chart available on the allgoldcoins.co.uk website, under the 'Information' section. It does not give precise values but it does approximately categorise sovereigns according to rarity, by year, and by mint. Then you could look up the individual sovereigns that have sold at the London Coin Company, Coins of the Realm, and Coin Cabinet Auctions. You will find a bewildering variety of prices according to rarity, year, and condition. All have photographs and a grading for each coin. However, it will be a very laborious process if you investigate all three - or even one of these. I suggest that you really need to narrow down your area of interest first.

One has now flown the Auronum nest.

Yes please, for one (only, alas).

Excellent photos.

Yes, please. to the 1965 and 1966. Roger

Yes please. Roger

I'd like no. 2, please.

They always end up with quite a few unsold lots, from what I have seen over the last few years. I suspect that this may be because they put the minimum bid too high. However, I like CoR better than Coin Cabinet because the latter now imposes a 6% (or 18% for their premium auctions!) buyer's surcharge. But at least Coin Cabinet start with a very low minimum bid in each case.

Thank you. I will take it. Please pm me your details.

Yes please (assuming that the apparent spots and marks on HM's neck and face. are, in fact, on the capsule and not on the coin itself - please confirm). Thank you.

Sending p.m.

Never mind, **** Van Dyke, watch out for curious hikers, as in the case, some years ago, where a Yorkshire farmer hid a very large sum up a chimney in a deserted barn, which was discovered by some hikers, who were found out by the police, but the really concerned parties subsequently were, first, his wife, who had not been informed of his hidden wealth, and, the similarly uninformed, but extremely interested, Inland Revenue officers. Both of the latter wanted to know why why he had secreted this substantial amount without telling them. (Answers on a postcard, please.) It wasn't at all 'reet' in his case.

What a lovely tribute and idea. £190

I think we can all sympathise with a busy person and be patient, especially as these are very nice coins at very reasonable prices.

Probably everything - or perhaps nothing. I have had no reply to my original post, or to two p.ms. I haven't experienced this lack of response before, so I assume that there must be a good reason for it.

I will take both 1981 sovereigns, please.

Well done! That's a bargain, even for a bullion coin. And well done Auronum, too.

Well said re. L.C. He can't still be skiing, can he? Perhaps he was understandably miffed by some ill-judged and unfair comments made about Chards on this forum, which I seem to recall noticing a little while back. And that lovely note and coins certainly take me back because I was a child of the 1950s (though L.K. O'Brien was not, I think, Chief Cashier in that decade). Nearly all of the decades since have been rubbish- just my opinion.

If you are embarking on any course of action that might lead, or worse, force you to take legal action, think again, and then think once or twice more, whilst you lie down in a darkened room with a damp towel over your head for at least half an hour. This (entirely personal - and free!) advice is based on three claims that I have pursued in the so-called 'small claims court'. They took place intermittently over the course of 40 years, so I was not exactly a perennially litigious person. But, even at this humble, supposedly simple and straightforward, and fairly inexpensive level of the English court system (I represented myself), they were far from trouble free. Indeed, over the years the cases became more and more difficult to pursue, even though I was successful in each case. In my last claim, I initially encountered a deputy district judge who was both totally ignorant of basic consumer law and biased in favour of the female (and very stupid) defendant. (I believe that the judge was a failed solicitor and burdened with feminist prejudices.) Consequently, it took three tiresome visits to a county court 40 miles away to achieve justice. I recovered hardly any of my expenses in this case, though I did recover the principal sum in dispute.

Tavex have the quarter ounce Yale (Tudor Beasts series) for about £423 currently. This is cheaper than anywhere else that I can find and cheaper even than any ordinary quarter ounce gold Britannia that I can find.

To get a very, very rough idea of scarcity, you could look at the sample of 1849 (and other) sovereigns sold at the auctions of London Coin, Coins of the Realm and Coin Cabinet over the past few years. Their websites give prices, grades, and good photos. Of course, there are other auctions, but these are the ones that I am familiar with. (In assessing the prices, allowance has to be made for the charge levied on purchasers by London Coins and more recently by Coin Cabinet. Also of course the fluctuating underlying price of gold will make the older prices look like bargains now.) For much interesting information about Victorian and later sovereigns, try allgoldcoins.co.uk and the various sub-sections there.

It might actually be the Quality Control department at work digging a chunk out to test that it really is gold (91 % or whatever it's supposed to be), because the Mint is no longer sure of what it is doing at any level or stage of production, so bad have things become. So, perhaps you should be grateful to have received a genuine gold coin, tested for purity, albeit otherwise in shocking condition. (I have actually seen a modern Chile 100 pesos with a comparable, prominent hole in it, allegedly made to test it for purity, though perhaps in this case done by some sceptical dealer or punter.)

Basically I'm with Lawrence over the meaning of 'real'. The word derives from the Latin 'res', meaning 'thing', i.e., as I take it, 'something that exists'. 'Genuine' or 'authentic' derives from the Greek 'authentikos'. Much depends upon the date of one's dictionary. I use the Concise Oxford, which goes back to 1911, but was revised in 1929. It does not allow for the meaning of 'genuine' i.e. 'not fake or forged', which some more recent dictionaries might give as a secondary meaning of 'real'. Being rather old fashioned, and the wrong side of 75, I tend to favour the traditional or, as one might say, the established meaning of 'real'.