LawrenceChard

I wish he would come round and help with the maintenance on my home machine: Finding a well-maintained flipper table has become much more difficult these days.

That, and similar stories have been going around for years. Not just about commercial banks, but also central banks. It's worth reading about banking history, reserve banking, fractional reserve banking, leverage, gearing, derivatives... Many share prices look like bubbles. Many third world countries have rampant inflation / devaluation, but it almost certainly will happen again to one or more major currencies eventually; we just don;t know which and when. If the above sounds risky, you could always have a gamble on cryptocurrencies, and hope you get out with a profit before the next big, or final, crash. Sound cheerful, don't I? ...and I am not even a conspiracy theorist.

Yes, the inflation / devaluation factor is food for thought. When I say devaluation, instead of thinking about how much more gold (and other stuff) has gone up, think of it as how much the pound sterling (or most other currencies), have gone down in value.

Flippers! 🙂

I hope he went back the next week to see if the seller had any more! 🙂

Way back in about 1964 we were selling gold sovereigns at £4 each, £37.50 per 10, £365 per 100, and £3500 per 1000. We can remember telling collectors that collecting sovereigns was cheaper than collecting pennies. Indeed a collection from Queen Victoria to date may well have cost less in sovereigns than in pennies or most other denominations. Sovereigns usually turn up in relatively good condition, whereas most other denominations suffer from considerable wear. However more often than not our excellent advice was ignored, perhaps because it was free! The above is from a page I wrote in 1998, which you can find here: https://24carat.co.uk/collectingcoinsframe.html Nothing much has changed, except prices have gone up by a factor of about 90. Back then, we used to sell minty ones or scarce dates, mintmarks etc., for £5 each. If you think they all look the same, be sure to pick out any 1828, 1841, 1908-C, 1917-L (mintage 1,014,714), 1920-S, 1937 Edward VIII, 1953, and a whole load more. Send them to us, and we will give you at least 2-4-1. As they all look the same, you won't care! 🙂 Actually, I like Victoria shields. Many of them have die cracks or die clashes, so even if you get two with the same date and die number, they are often different. It gets even more interesting to find two sovereigns of the same date, each with the same obverse die crack, but different die numbers on the reverse. Fascinating!, and that's from someone who has seen and owned literally millions of sovereigns.

Demand at least 2 large holes, and don't settle for less than 2 medium size ones.🙂

Don't forget some of the stuff at car boots sale might be stolen. There may also be fakes. In a perfect world, all the sellers at them would be ordinary honest people offloading stuff, but crooks are bound to attend them, particularly because most transactions are cash, and anonymous. Some regular car boot traders also sell things like 1780 Maria Theresa thalers, especially worn or grubby ones. When buyers show interest, the sellers feign ignorance and naivety. Typically they will get about double the dealer selling price from "suckers".

By Virtue of the fact she left her bra off, but I thought that was Liberty? 🙂

2021 Platinum St. Helena Queens Virtues Nice looking coin. We looked at these a few days ago, but: St. Helena not UK, so not CGT exempt. Platinum, so subject to VAT. We decided not to stock them unless we get enquiries.

I hope so! Actually, yes they are, but perhaps it's because ours are the lowest premium we are aware of in the UK. Because we avoid the UK distribution monopoly, we buy ours outside the UK, and have to re-import them, so our first delivery is still about a week away, but after that we intend to carry stocks.

Anybody know who the original "Pinball Wizard" was or is? Clue: How do you think he does it?

That's an easy question. Anybody out there want to guess my answer? 🙂

I have noticed the "two names" tactic used here in the UK. Most TSF members will probably be aware that Bullion by Post burst onto the UK market back in about 2008, with heavy marketing and P.R., and some very sharp prices on a small selection of gold and silver bullion coins. Some years ago, they acquired the domain name gold.co.uk for a reported £600,000. What they seem to have done since is to jack up all their prices on their BullionByPost site, while offering cut prices on gold.co.uk I suspect they were using predatory pricing initially, to eliminate smaller competitors, gain market share, but then jack prices up once they got a "monopoly". (Amazon did this). Using two names can also lock up the top places on search engines, and most people are too lazy or too stupid to check more than the first few places, so end up getting ripped off because they are just buying from whoever pays Google the most money for their clicks. I don't see either of their names heading the lowest price lists very often on @Darr3nG's price comparison site. I saw Gainesville Coins mentioned twice above. I would certainly not recommend dealing with them because they are copyright abusers. See here for details: https://www.goldcopyright.co.uk/copyright-abuse/gainesville-coins-of-lutz-florida-in-multiple-copyright-infringement-x34/ If dealers ethical standards make it OK for them to use/borrow/steal high quality photographs of their competitors, what does this say about their honesty and integrity, or their ethical standards towards their customers? Gainesviles have never apologised for using our images, nor offered compensation.

You might have missed what I said about magic mushrooms. It was another Royal Mint Cockup.

Don't know, but that would make it the world's largest coin ever! Works out at about 31,000 tonnes. 🙂 Correction: 62,000 tonnes.

You were not imagining it: But someone at the Mint might have been on the magic mushrooms!

Has anybody posted about the 5 ounce gold proof yet?

Just wait until the 10 kilo version turns up!

Five Ounce Gold Proof I failed to notice this was the 5 ounce version when I uploaded it! I don't know what time ours got delivered this morning, and we were not the first to post about them, but Dynamic Doug did his usual photo skills for these: and a cased shot: We are still working on some silver photos.

We received some of our first Beasts Completer coins this morning, but we sold out of our first allocation about a half hour after the RM did. Here is our first photo: More to follow soon.

Looks like you won the TSF sweepstake (shame nobody chipped in any prize money though).

Hammered? Is that how they get all the marks and scratches on them?