Silverlocks

I can answer this - Some of my early photos were done with a Samsung Note 10 and a clip-on macro lens. They're ok as they go but have one major issue in that they can only focus up to a few centimetres from the lens. This makes it tricky to decently light the coins as the phone gets in the way, and the camera has a very narrow depth of focus (less than 1mm) and the whole assembly is small enough to be prone to diffraction effects. This makes it tricky to get decent focus on coins. As the lenses are quite cheap (mine was about £20) it's worth trying. However, you would get better results with a phone hat has a periscope camera as it will be able to zoom on the coin enough without the macro lens. Modern iPhones and quite a few modern Android models have these. @Solachesis took his photos with an android phone that had a periscope camera. You can see which lens to clip the macro extension over by running the camera app and just looking. You might also need to take any cases off the phone, as they can get in the way of the lens (in between the lens and the phone's camera) and affect the focus. You'll probably also need to get a tripod and a clamp for the phone and one of the little bluetooth dohickeys for remotely triggering the shutter. I also used to use a little spirit level to make sure the phone was pointing straight down. The last thing is that gold tends to confuse the software that auto-calibrates the colour settings, so you might want to get a grey card (a few quid off Amazon) and figure out how to lock the white balance on your camera app - point the camera at the grey card and lock the white balance once it's adjusted.

I think he moved back to Italy.

Chard's are teasing the 1/10th gold. I've got the 2021-2023 of these, so I'll probably get the 2024 when it drops. Maybe I'll have enough left over from the school fees to buy a 2024 dollaridoo this month.

@HonestMoneyGoldSilver - Better change your password. I think Treetop's gotten into your account.

Sold.

1915 George V sovereign Here's a nice 1915 London George V sovereign for £386 posted RMSD - that's below spot. Good photos as usual, no vaseline here - what you see is what you get. . Payment by bank transfer, UK buyers only.

Here's a couple of shots of my 2022 Dollaridoo. These are done with some strips of 1 and 2 stop filter gel to make soft shadows over a diffuser. The lighting is a panel and a spot, with the two photos showing different relative brightness.

Mine wasn't much more than a rooster; they're not that uncommon.

I've got some Air-Tites A22 caps that will fit some sovs comfortably, some a bit tight (Gillicks are prone to this), and I've had a few Australian sovs (Eds mainly) that flat out won't fit into them at all. I think Australian sovs were often a bit wider than spec for some reason.

Yes, the mantle design in the reverse is nice.

I've got a few LMU coins - a few Roosters and Vrenellis and a Belgian and Italian coin, plus a few others.

A little google-fu shows several online vendors that have them, plus a few on Ebay. None in the UK, though.

The 1815 Maria Luigia di Parma 40 Lire coin. She was Napoleon's ex after Josephine and the coin is quite spectacular. Mintage on the 40 franc is much larger than the 20 franc, so paradoxically it tends to be cheaper. 1815 because it was only minted a few times and the 1815 mintage is the first and by far the biggest at about 220,000. https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces21515.html If you don't mind straying off the LMU, a young portrait Wilhelmina 10 Gulden perhaps https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces37612.html Some of the earlier French 20 franc designs such as the Ceres https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces8003.html European gold coins are a deep, deep rabbit hole and, unfortunately, they don't seem to be anywhere as well documented as sovereigns, at least not in any media accessible to googlebot. Here are a couple of books on the subject. They're pretty broad, with a fairly comprehensive treatment of their subject matter, but they tend to be shallow, with only some basic statistics on mintages and no real history. Schlumberger, European Gold Coins Guide Book - https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/european-gold-coins-guide-book_hans-schlumberger/1045234/item/44932759/#edition=58389805&idiq=44932759 Friedburg & Friedburg - Gold Coins of the World - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/112977903350

@Charliemouse

It will take longer than that for the secondary market to settle, I think, maybe 6-12 months.

It would be ok at a 'Reasonable' price, but the majority will fall in value from their retail price, so buying at RRP is more likely to lose you money than otherwise. I suggest keeping an eye open on the secondary market and getting a sense of where they settle out to. More often than not (quite a lot more often), you'll lose money on high-value proofs if you buy them straight off the RM's web site at retail.

Like this?

130.

@Fenlander1 - you still flogging 1oz coins?

That's a lot of sovereigns..

If you put a smidge of silver in the alloy it would be just the dog's b0llox.

More like some combination of poorly motivated staff working in a toxic culture with perverse incentives. Remember, this is an organisation whose management are happy to blatantly lie about their issues with milk spotting, even when it's painfully obvious they're doing so. This is nothing to do with the staff and everything to do with the the place being run by t0ssers. This sort of thing always comes from the top. George Ansell was ripping the Royal Munt's management a new one for their incompetence 150 years ago. In an organisation that was 1,000 years old then, there's not much reason for it to have gotten any better.

@CallumHSLimited - do you still have any half sovs?

Maybe it's a nod to The Exorcist.

Make sure you're on the NBS next time.