CollectForFun

49 minutes ago, Bratnia said:

(repeating that chart I posted earlier)

 

What's this chart by the way? Upthread you say it's US$/gold? What ratio exactly?

The one I have meets my needs so I can recommend it. The brand is Levenhuk, you can check their product range on https://www.levenhuk.com/catalogue/magnifiers/series-zeno-gem/.

Illumination can definitely help. And it costs so little anyway that there is no reason not to choose the better option, in my opinion.

Actually, found something very similar here: https://www.moviarg.com/medallas/CRBH.html 

where it says that it's a silver button. It seems it has similar mark on the obverse where it used to be attached to clothes (?) so that's probably it.

Looks like some kind of imitation of the Spanish (colonial) 2 reales, judging by the size. Like a game token or some other type of token e.g. payment token, maybe issued by some A.Fernandez to his customers, workers...

9 hours ago, Arganto said:

There is an M present on the neck of "lady liberty" (it's a bloke in my opinion, likely based upon Apollo and those before him that bore different names but that's not a discussion for this tread 🤣)

Actually, is there anything to discuss?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Willess_Williams

4 hours ago, Alex944 said:

Thank you for that!

do you mean it was sold at spot +20%?

Well, it was sold for 20 euros hammer price plus auction commission (~20%) so ~24 euros total.

Certainly interesting coins, thanks for sharing. I would also agree that you paid more or less fair price and if nothing else got a nice souvenir from your holiday which can even increase in value over time!

Just for the record, the latest auction results for these coins were Botswana sold at EUR 20+%, Tanzania unsold at CHF 20+%.

27 minutes ago, LawrenceChard said:

undesputable* 

* indesputable if you are American.

😎

That's quite disputable in my opinion...

20 hours ago, refero said:

out of curiosity; i dont really understand why on earth they would never list their their lots in a "normal" way. Per category, and per year.

everything is shown randomly, it is very annoying

They want it like that...:

On 06/04/2021 at 19:05, CoinsOfTheRealmAuctions said:

Thank you for your polite suggestion. We have had it catergorised in the past, however we have found a lot of customers like the auction jumbled as it makes it more interesting to watch on the LIVE auction.

One suggestion for customers who prefer everything regiment is to do a search in the search bar for your chosen interest ie sovereigns and all those coins will come up together.

You can't please everyone all the time!

Best regards

Louise

 

I'm sorry I have no view if this is good or bad but I definitely think it was a bit too long and also published more than 1,5 years ago! ☺️

Thanks for posting an update and photos of the coin - it looks fabulous in its special-label holder!

And by the way, I think you can relax, your annoyance with NGC over the guarantee is probably just a misunderstanding. According to NGC T&C:

Quote

items that have been graded but are not encapsulated in NGC holders, which include items that receive an NGC Photo Certificate ... are also not covered by this Guarantee.

So in your case your item received a grade on the Photo Certificate, but issuing this certificate and grade alone would not mean the Guarantee applies. But if an item is additionally also encapsulated, which is also your case, then the Guarantee of course does apply.

So, the Photo Certificate which you received is just a little extra which you in fact do not need, as it's primarily meant for coins that remain raw, unslabbed. And maybe that's part of the cause for the delay - maybe Spink first asked only for the Photo Certs but later decided to have the coins regularly slabbed?

Alas, the postage is very often a deal breaker for many otherwise good purchases at auctions if you have to compete with room bidders or locals who can go and pick up their lots or pay just local postage.

In your situation it may be worth asking the auction house if they could maybe use some cheaper shipping method. Maybe they use e.g. FedEx as a rule and hence the higher cost but may agree that they use regular post as an exception. Worked for me a few times.

I've got one more, the best choice so far imo:

Sweden 5 kronor 2.24g .900

I don't see any reason why you should try to achieve 1 oz precisely, but if you really need to, your best chance is either

- 1994 1/15oz maple

- some of the Niue 2g .999 5 dollars or Solomon Islands 10 dollars

- George I or George III 1/4 guinea 2.1g .9167

However, none of those particularly easily available I'm afraid... 

2 hours ago, GoldDiggerDave said:

@Simonz which auction was this? I'm amazed an auction admitted to this I very much doubt if they had a high numismatic rarity graded coin they would do the same,  its a case of wanting it both ways. 

https://www.spink.com/lot/22111004060

https://auktionen.sincona.com/Los/43/145.0/

https://www.ngccoin.com/certlookup/2124443-033/NGCDetails/

Graded "Details" sold for CHF 3,000+%, out of the slab with tooling admitted in the lot description sold for £3,500+% just 4 months later.

Details slab adds very little if anything to the coin's value...

2 hours ago, GoldDiggerDave said:

Spink are not even constant with their own descriptions they are happy to take the NGC grade if the grade pushed the coin into the highest population but the second it drops the grade of the coin and especially if its already been though their auction and their  "experts"  they are having a dig at the NGC they can't have it both ways, take the grade if it makes them more money, or slate the grade when their "experts" have got it wrong in previous auctions......This is so funny! 

Why do you expect that Spink be impartial and not try to improve the sale in any way they can? As long as they don't provide intentionally misleading descriptions (their reputation would go down the hill quickly then) I don't see anything wrong with what they do - they provide NGC assessment as well as their own opinion and of course they won't be arguing with favourable NGC grade.

8 hours ago, Simonz said:

Just browsing through one of Spink's upcoming auctions and they are regularly passing judgement on graded coins, "preposterous grade" see pic. Also they admit to de-slabbing coins when they disagree with the grade. Doesn't instil much confidence in existing grading neveremind new ones!

 

De-slabbing a coin (or any graded collectible for that matter) if the owner isn't happy with the grade is quite normal I would say.

Spink just tries to reach as high price at the auction as possible. If the slab doesn't help its case, there's no reason why they should keep it slabbed. The coin is still the same and the interested buyer is free to decide if they want it or not.

I understand that when you can't see the coin in person you must rely on pictures and description provided, but that's the cost of bidding online without knowing what exactly you are bidding on. Those are the rules of the game we play (and therefore it's important to remember that we do it mostly for fun! ☺️).

On 17/11/2022 at 17:31, LawrenceChard said:

I also received an e-mail, shich was not from NGC, but from some outfit calling itself "Certified Collectibles Group", but with the link you have shown.

The full e-mail said:

Introducing NGCX, a 10-point Grading Scale for Coins

NGC is excited to introduce NGCX, the first 10-point grading scale for coins. The 10-point grading scale has long been the standard for most collectibles, including comic books, sports cards, trading cards and more. Now, with NGCX, coin collecting will benefit from the same intuitive and approachable scale. The new 10-point grading scale will supplement the 70-point Sheldon scale, which will continue to be used by NGC for regular submissions. A Certified Collectibles Group affiliate, NGC is the world leader in third-party coin certification because of its constant innovation and collector focus, with NGCX being only the latest example. While there is no difference in quality between a grade on the 10-point scale and a grade on the 70-point scale, the difference for the hobby is exponential. New collectors now have a clear path to embrace coin collecting. The path is NGCX.

Which makes it sound like the relatively unknown entity called NGC has been honoured by CCG who have allowed it to be one of their affiliates.

I suspect it may be the other way round if the truth were told.

Because I only scanned it very quickly when I first saw it, I thought it was some dodgy, small, new US dealer trying to big themselves up by plugging their own grading and slabbing,

This snap conclusion may have been wrong, but I still have a suspicion that "Grading and Slabbing" is still of more advantage to the companies operating it, and the dealers using it, than it is to coin collectors.

Am I being cynical? Yes! Am I right? Who knows?

😎

We coin collectors perhaps tend to overestimate the premier status of NGC in the overall collectibles grading industry. But the fact is, that while NGC grades around 4 million coins a year (info based on data from the previous 3 years), the cards grading equivalent PSA (not from this CCG family of companies but a competitor) reportedly graded over 1 million cards in October 2022 alone. So the reach and significance of some of these other grading companies may well be much greater than we would ever be willing to admit.

4 hours ago, Katiec said:

Thank you  so very much to you all for an amazingly helpful and detailed response to my request for help. I'm so impressed by your detective work !

I shall try the rubbing and macro photo technique to try and get that elusive number!!

I now know far more than I did thanks to you guys. I'm amazed to find the bowl is from Palermo ... I thought it might be German... shows how much I know ...

I can sleep tonight knowing so much more

THANKS A MILLION YOU LOVELY GUYS AND GALS XXXXXX

 

Hello @Katiec, look what I found! 

Look familiar? 😉

As it turned out, AFM is indeed the name of the producer: AFM from Palermo (as @stefffana rightly identified). This is their webpage where you can also see their products: http://www.afm.it and here you could even buy some of them:

https://www.argenteriamb.it/en/24_afm-argenti.

On 18/11/2022 at 20:49, stefffana said:

Hi, dear friends!

What do you think about these three coins issued for Luxembourg? 

Will qualify for a respectable LMU collection?

In any case, they are charming coins in their own right ☺️

Interesting coins. I especially like the engraver's signature on the obverse. Btw why Details? Because cleaned?

4 hours ago, LawrenceChard said:

From memory, that was the "half price" first coin in the set, a kind of loss leader or gambit to get people hooked!

😎

Look what I found 😉

https://24carat.co.uk/1997goldenweddingcrowncollection.html

Some quite funny remarks in there!

First of all congratulations on your purchase! Is that the coin you won? Definitely a nice foundation of your (hopefully) future collection!

As regards slabbing of these coins, I noticed that Spink does this often even for not so special coins and quite likely this is to appeal to US market, but here it surely serves also another purpose, that is, to guarantee the Ellerby Hoard origin. Therefore I think it's only positive if they sent the coins for relabelling and NGC's special "Ellerby Area Hoard" label looks really nice! So I would be happy about that, even if it means delays, which of course is not ideal.

Regarding "the conversion of ‘Details’ to ‘Genuine’" I am not very sure what they mean, as NGC does not have 'Genuine' labels to my knowledge. If a coin gets Details grade, it is still geniune, the same genuine as if it got a regular numerical grade. So, not sure what that is about.

Edit: I have just realised NGC has 'Genuine' labels for El Cazador shipwreck coins and likely also for other such coins where their provenance is important. On those labels they do not state grade, just certify the provenance. So presumably that's what it's about - NGC already assigned Details grade to some of those coins but on the final Ellerby Hoard labels they will not mention Details grade, just Genuine?

2 hours ago, Zeuk said:

Be pretty akward to only find that out after investing 10+k in precious metals ... reflecting back i did wonder what they meant by troy 🤔😄

 

 

Advantage of coming from a country where we do not even know what the ounce is, let alone how many grams ☺️

2 hours ago, TeaTime said:

Assuming the 1-10 scale will be sub-divided (i.e 7.2 or 8.3) then it's really just expanding the 70 point scale into a 100 point scale, not 10.

A cynical and obvious ploy to part gullible people from their money. And it will work.

Full grading scale here: https://www.ngccoin.com/specialty-services/ngcx-10-point-grading-scale/

Divided to 0.1 from 10 to 9. Then 8.8 - 8.5 - 8.3. From 8 below the step is 0.5. So in total 30 grades, the same as on the current 1-70 scale.

So it's really just an effort to open the market of graded coins to a wider audience - it's easier to explain to a complete outsider that "10 is the best grade".