LawrenceChard

Yes, @ChardsCoinandBullionDealer now closely examine most new RM products, to check for milkspots, scratches, and any other potential problems. We did not normally do this in the past, but it seems to have become necessary recently. Strangely enough: Many years ago, we found we were getting two types of queries or complaints: Some people would complain after receiving, say, a gold proof "sovereign" set, because they was some black fluff on one of the coins, and even theough it was just from the case insert, were unhappy that we had not checked the set over before posting it (We sent most out in their mint sealed bags). Others would complain because they had received a set which was not in its mint sealed bag, possibly because we had done random checks on a few sets. Sometimes you can't win! 🙂

In that case: Rhythm is the longest English word with no vowels. The word "gullible" is not in any English dictionary. There are three types of people in this world, those who can count, and those who can't.

Most "Review" sites charge companies varying levels of membership fee, with differing levels of control. TrustPilot for example ask £4000, and I think this is possibly just their base level. Being very cynical about many aspects of modern day marketing, I wonder how much the Royal Mint have to pay Feefo? 🙂

I don't actually know where we sourced that particular set. Our daughter Juliana possibly bought it privately direct from the Mint as a retail customer, or it could have come into us from a dealer, collector, or flipper. She did forecast a month ago that some of the crazy prices were likely to soften, for a mixture of reasons. Some of the hysterical demand may have come from Japan, and if all the Japanese collectors have now got one, then some of the British dealers will no longer be bidding prices up to supply to Tokyo. I have almost stopped being surprised at some things that happen in the coin market. Quite a few years ago, we had accumulated a slight overstock of 1937 four coin gold proof sets (£5 to 1/2 sovereign). From memory, we wer asking £3350, and we had 4 sets in stock. Most weeks we would get an enquiry from someone interested in buying, we would have a conversation, quote our price, which was already on our site, we would politely decline a counter offer or a request for a discount, probably explaining that the set was very fairly priced, and possibly too cheap. At this stage, we had not sold one for 2 or 3 years, so I ended up selling 3 of them to a fellow dealer (at £3250 each). Then something happened, I think one must have sold at auction, on on ebay, for over £10K. Somebody bought our last set, and suddenly we were getting multiple enquiries daily from people wanting to buy one., all sounding surprised and frustrated because we didn't have one in stock. All desperate to add one to their collection. While writing this paragraph, I had a quick Google search, and found one on offer by one of my least favourite competitors, for almost £20K.

You should be glad that HMRC decided to allow the secondhand special scheme in the first place. When VAT was introduced in 1973, there was only the Antique Special Scheme*, which was without doubt unfair to anybody buying, selling, or dealing in any secondhand goods which were not antique. The secondhand special scheme only came into being in 1996. Of course, it is not a panacea for low prices. Market prices depend on supply, demand, competition, elasticity (ask an economist), physical location, transport, and quite a few other factors. No, it is not a scam. As a simple example, consider that @ChardsCoinandBullionDealer make a market in secondary market one ounce silver bullion coins. About 90+% of the time, we/they don't have stock. I blame this mainly on the silver investors / stackers / customers, who selfishly buy it all within days / hours / minutes of us having any in stock. Perhaps they know something that we don't, such as "we are too cheap". 🙂 * There was also a secondhand car scheme.

I'm about 68 kilos. Works out about £2,857,320 I'm definitely underpriced. 🙂

I think that when I come to buy my first gold coin, I’m going to give the likes of eBay a miss. I hope you were not ever seriously thinking about it! Sounds like TSF have put you right. I'm not sure it's possible to buy a gold coin on ebay, only gold-plated, fakes, etc.🙂 I’ll turn to a reputable bullion dealer or the likes of you good folks on the forum. As long as you stick to the good ones.

The latest RM annual report, dated 24th June 2021 has been published, and is available online here: https://www.royalmint.com/globalassets/__rebrand/_structure/about-us/annual-reports/reports/2020_21-royal_mint_limited_annual_report-p1-web.pdf I have not read it yet, but according to the Daily Telegraph yesterday, they: attracted 25,000 new investors to its precious metals division. doubled sales of gold and silver made £12.4 million profit before tax compared with £200K los the previous year triggered an employee bonus of £3.2 million. So, I reckon: That's 25,000 people paid too much for their gold and silver bullion coins last year. @ChardsCoinandBullionDealer are missing out here. Must try harder! 🙂

I once read Coco the Clown, by Nicolai Poliakoff. Another Coco the Clown works at the Blackpool Tower Circus. I photographed her on stilts a few years ago, and when I asked if she was related to Nicolai Poliakoff, she had never heard of him!

It's not in mine! 🙂

Actually my spelling is excellent, even if I say so myself. Sadly my fingers are dyslexic, or maybe they are so far behind my brain, that by the time I hit the keys, there is a mutli-sentence buffer zone running in excess of its capacity. P.S. I can't tell you how my fingers reacted to "abrasive"! 🙂

When you said "I liked your comments and agree", I still don't know whether that was referring to my comments, or to @NewCoins comments, or possibly someone else completely different. I was just trying to pass on a helpful forum tip to make things clear. 🙂

I did guess the main answer! 🙂 Your further scheme sounds quite sensible. I can envisage a few problems: The seller needs to trust you, or vice versa. What happens when some coins are imperfect? You invest in 10 coins (I know you said about hedging against your BV account/stock), platinum price drops, do you make a loss? Whether platinum prices go up or down, there is nobody who wants to buy, or wants to but can't afford any. Maybe they want a different date! I am not knocking the idea, just "thinking out loud". I see our companies role as a market maker. We will (almost) always quote or discuss a buying price on any coins in any quantity. Part of this is that we need to maintain sufficient liquidity to be able to pay immediately for whatever we get offered. Sometimes we buy in very little for days or a week at a time, then we get a big buy-in, and the next day there is a queue of other people wanting to sell often quite substantial "dollops" of coins. This is not unusual, these things often go in waves, almost as though they were synchronised. A few months ago, someone brought in multiple large cartons of modern issue, mainly proof, coins, some gold, some platinum. they included 5 and 10 ounce coins, mainly Channel Islands, most were low issue limit, nearly all bought from Harrington and Byrne. From memory, the total came to almost £400K. It took us a good few days to work through them to establish their value, followed by weeks photographing them, more weeks adding them to our stock system with descriptions and VAT status. A few sold within days, we probably under-priced them, but I don't know what proportion we have now sold. I suspect it will not be high, and also that we still have too many of them left in stock in a year's time. This is not a complaint or pleas for sympathy, we remain happy we bought them, but in the few weeks either side of buying these, we also bought a few largish bullion lots, and several other modern issue parcels. Back to platinum, about 20 years ago, a Rothschilds customer wanted to sell 50 x one ounce platinum bullion coins, maples or eagles from memory. She was pointed in our direction, and we duly bought them, without much enthusiasm. It took us months to get our investment back into cash, even offering them out as low as 1% premium. ... and of course, when the palladium price spiked a year or so ago, palladium coins and bars were coming out of the woodwork much faster than we could sell them. Our investment in them was a substantial 6 figure sum. Almost nobody wanted to buy. We did end up shifting almost all, but only after prices were about 15% down from the peak. In both of these cases, I am sure we ended up in profit, but we had to work hard, and we certainly didn't get rich.

If you are responding to an existing post, it makes sense to use the "Quote" link below the post you are responding to, then everyone knows who you are replaying to and about what. (And I am not very experienced in using forums).

Fake / Imitation / Replica Krugerrand Bought from Etsy for £50 Somebody sent this to sell to us recently: While our photos make the "coin" look quite nice, it was surprisingly yellow. This was our Niton test analysis: The carat weight works out to 20.95 grams (should be 33.93 grams). We did not get round to measuring it, but it looked to be exactly the right dimensions for a Kruger. The results show it was brass. the one thing that surprised me is that there was no indication of gold plating. The lady who sent it to us did not sound surprised when we informed her it was not a genuine Krugerrand and contained no gold. She told us she had paid £50 for it on Etsy. So, ebay does not have a monopoly on fakes.

While I am often critical of LMO and their parent company Samlerhuset, the advert you posted is almost good value from them, and at least they are offering genuine coins (we presume). I class the scammers on ebay as far worse, but I also accuse ebay of being worse, as not only do they host thousands of misleading listing daily, but they do so in the full knowledge of most that is happening on their site, as partly evidence by the slow response to about 20 reports on the 1841 sovereign listing by TSF members. I have reported many listing in the past, but it would probably need to have a vast army of volunteers checking and reporting daily, and even then, I doubt it would change ebay's policies. It would probably require considerable media adverse publicity to get any change. Earlier today, we were discussing LMO, and looked at an information page I posted way back in 2006: https://24carat.co.uk/frame.php?url=londonmintoffice.html At the time, our page was probably more successful in one respect than we had hoped. If you Googled "London Mint Office" our page showed as the first result. Unfortunately, we had not counted on the extent of the stupidity of their customers. For several weeks our phone lines were flooded with torrents of abusive tirades from people along the lines of "I've already spent hours on the phone to you trying to get you to stop sending coins to me that I have not ordered. Unless it stops, I am going to report you to Trading Standards, the police, the newspapers..." etc. When we manage to get a word in during a pause for breath, we would typically try to explain that they had phoned Chard, not the London Mint Office, or sometimes we would ask if they knew who they had phoned. This was inevitably followed by a further tirade of abuse. It seems none of them bothered to read the page we had provided. They Googled London Mint Office, saw our page and phoned us. We tried to help them on the phone, but they would not listen. Talk about shooting ourselves in the foot! On a more positive note, some people posted coins to us that they had received from London Mint Office, which I think we threw into a box until anyone enquired about it, which I don't think anyone did. I have issued similar warnings about ebay on numerous occasions, but have come to the conclusion that it is probably a waste of time and effort. There are some people who it's almost impossible to help.

It sounds like you are responded to 2 different people and posts here. I simple tip in forums is to use the "Quote" link below the post you are responding to, as I have just done here. That way members can see that you have responded to them, and know which post youi are responding to. This should make life easier for you and anyone trying to help you or to follow the thread. You can also tag members in by using the "@" key followed by their user name. I can see from one of your earlier posts that you returned the set, and we refunded you. Our Customer Service team are very good, and I very much doubt the anyone of would panic if or because someone asked to speak to me. You do seem to be quite unlucky in many of your dealings. Few will be surprised about ebay fakes and fraudsters. It's good that you are using TSF, and I hope your luck with coin purchases improves.

I smiled when I read the part of your post where you said before you knew anything about precious metals, you bought some sovereigns from Baird. 🙂 By now, other TSF members have informed you that 1917 sovereigns are not rare. 1917 Sovereigns Mintage Mintmark Mint Mintage L London 1,014,714 C Ottawa, Canada 58,875 M Melbourne, Australia 934,469 P Perth, Australia 4,110,286 S Sydney, Australia 1,666,000 Total 7,784,344 Source https://goldsovereigns.co.uk/1917sovereign.html As you can see, the Perth Mint ones are the highest mintage. The London Mint ones are much rarer than the mintage figure would suggest, as most were melted down. Although your photos are not great, and as @richatthecroft said "Hard to tell from the photos, but the first might have been polished?", but in this case the obverse (head side) of the first coin is a very obviously a fake. The raised pimples are a dead giveaway, the crack(s) visible on you later photo demand closer inspection. The reverse does not look like the same coin, but mainly due to the colour difference, but it does also appear to have at least one worrying raised pimple. I doubt that Baird test every coin they handle (it's too slow). Human eye, coupled with some experience, is much quicker and more reliable. I mainly use an XRF machine for a lazy second opinion. The coin looks very polished, probably ex-jewellery, and a dealer who I will not name 🙂 would probably class it as a "grade C" if it was genuine. Its light weight might be due to wear rather than because it is fake. It would be interesting to see an alloy analysis, but you are unlikely to get this if you return it to Baird. Now you know a little more about precious metals, where would you now buy sovereigns from? 🙂 Even if the alloy content is within normal limits, this is no guarantee that the coin is genuine, although many people do not realise this (including some dealers I suspect). As it happens, I have never heard of anyone receiving a fake sovereign from Baird, but then I don't remember having been asked to check any sourced from them. They were originally mainly refiners and scrap metal dealers, and it is quite common for scrap dealers to sell some very questionable quality coins, in my experience.

1860 Shield Sovereigns I was supposed to be grading these to go on sale, but we photographed them instead. 4 x 5 = 20 It's nice when they fit in a neat grid pattern.

Now he tells us! 🙂

One down, only another million to go! 🙂

Can I ask you a hypothetical question? Would you buy 100 x platinum Britannias at your indicated bid price of +12% (on a secondary market VAT special scheme), for immediate payment?

Perhaps he thinks it's 50% gold! 🙂

Not necessarily, hallmarking is intended for items like jewellery and silverware. When sending goods for assay, it is usual to state whether the item is Sterling silver, Britannia silver etc. If the item passes it will get an appropriate stamp, for example "925", or a lion mark. If what you require is a metal analysis, with or without additional metals, you will need to send it specifically for analysis. the cost for this is much higher. As an example, if a manufacturer sends 500 sterling silver chains for assay, the charge might be £1 each, depending on weight. For a bar, you might pay £30 to £40 for a fire assay (cupelation), which will involve drilling to get a core sample. An XRF test might cost a similar amount from an assay office, but is not as accurate. A dealer with an XRF machine might also test it for you. @ChardsCoinandBullionDealer currently charge £10.

You are probably right, and I considered saying that they shared those honours, but I was trying to keep it brief.