kimchi

Could you give it a rest please Lawrence? You dropped an apostrophe here. Almost all your posts have a typo or a grammatical error. It's getting tiresome imvho to have you picking up on others for similar errors.

Wow, great blog post, thanks for posting! Did anyone else know that the Mint have a production facility in the US??? Never heard that before.

No. 'Mintage' refers to mintage. 'Presentation' is used for presentation. No idea what your 'presention' refers to.

Are they going to amend the listing do you know?

Absolutely. Get a practical skill under your belt and get blooming good at it asap, you'll do better than anyone else.

Not looking good is it?

I agree with all of that - it has started Which post of mine were you replying to though, please? I saw interest rates of 10%+ in the late 80s as a child, so no memory of the 70s at all, but studied economics in the 90s.

I can, and I don't mind going without anyway, but who's looking after the folks in their 80s like this? (I know you were joking pal but it's getting very serious!)

The small business owners I know can barely afford to stay open at all, let alone give their workers a pay rise. They will simply go bust

Six months ago I had a nice chat with an old fella in my local chippie who'd been going there for 40 years plus. I went in about three weeks ago with the price hikes and I don't think I can afford it anymore myself

I was 'laughed off' by some Youtubers last year for saying that interest rates should have been much higher, and should have been gradually raised to much higher levels for years - 'oh they can't do that, it'll break the economy'. Well wtf else are we looking at now? And they hammer the students first with where interest rates should have been at least two years ago? WTF? Outrageous. But there will be no salary correction in the public sector (those in Government who give their mates billions to develop useless Track and Trace, or millions per day to store useless PPE, which also cost billions from their mates). Small businesses on the whole cannot afford to raise salaries at the same time costs are increasing (or have already increased) up to 100%. Hammered by Covid mandates our PM flouts with barely an apology, many of our last (remaining) small businesses are on their knees already...

It's been a long time since I went to university. I was aware things had become very tough for students, but I am beyond shocked, that is absolutely outrageous 😮

I'm still expecting a 'regular' (!) piedfort in the summer, what do others think?

He must have a big nozzle

Can you get any closer magnification on the 5oz to see if they are indeed stubborn flecks (that Conservation would remove if you are grading anyway)? The 10oz I would not accept.

It depends very much on the set, but generally I would say that you'll get the best prices by splitting up sets unfortunately rather than selling as a whole. E.G. the number of people willing to pay top price for one coin will be much larger than the number of people willing to buy a whole set they don't need most of just for one or two coins. The QBs on the whole did very well indeed but I personally do not expect the same from the Tudor Beasts and am not touching them. Maybe the Monarchs could buck the trend (?) but not inclined to find out!

It leaves a very bad taste I agree and arouses suspicion and (understandable) resentment. I don't think we can yet be sure the Mint is being quite so devious, however. I don't personally think they're competent enough (but of course could be wrong). I think on balance they are just useless and making 'the best' of a bad job with a terrible system. I am fed up with it all though and won't be buying from them again once my proof modern 'Liz' Sov set is finished. I was lucky (it seems) there and benefited from their incompetence (this time, and for once). I missed the proofs on launch but some came suddenly back into stock later and I was able to get a single full as well as a three coin set. The real mystery (or not, it's the Mint!) is why I received mine before some who had ordered on the day of release. All mine were fine and yet a number of 'early birds' received problem coins. Shocking. The Mint has a lot to correct and I don't think it will. I think they'll only get worse, and more cynical. I'm pretty much out.

@dicker yes I did hear that's where they were taken to/from. On-topic: I love 24ct by far, but it's not always the most practical choice or wisest investment (not that I am saying you can go too far wrong with it). I believe there is some sort of deep psychological and/or spiritual connection, or even a symbiotic relationship, with pure gold, as there is with silver. Also the encoded knowledge that it is true money. I suppose it's from common usage, but I would use carat/ct as a preference, yet have no problem typing 24k/kt

Many thanks Roy, think you've probably got it (it would have been Chile then)! And that is also fascinating, I'd love to meet such folk. Why would they study the language though, it seems so niche? This was one village, very high up in the mountains, and the people had never left (as of the early 2000s). They were only just discovered, and then visited. It was an absolutely fascinating case study, I wish I'd taken more interest in it at the time because I've lost touch with the fella now.

I find it endlessly fascinating (and as per this thread, endlessly full of surprises!). The strange thing is, albeit before my linguistic interests, I went to university in Leeds (obviously with folk from not only all parts of these fair isles, but also many from around the world) and don't remember any great problems or differences at all! Even in Asia, apart from the odd one like 'fanny' not much stands out. And mostly I never notice anything on this forum either, apart from the occasional msiplaced word by a non-native speaker (who is usually far too apologetic about their English)!

Yes, very interesting! 'Rocket science' has always been the standard phrase here (with 'brain surgery' a distant second) and I can't imagine things being so very different between Kent and Cambridgeshire (and I partly grew up in Herts and still spend a lot of time there). 'Rocket' is from European languages but I would guess it's a safe bet that modern usage came from the American space program. It wasn't Argentina - my friend was talking about a very specific Welsh dialect spoken by a mountain people (I'm pretty sure it was Peru) that haven't left the area for hundreds of years - just a village of them. I wish I recalled the full story, it was quite something. Iirc the dialect is not one that many people in Wales now would be able to fully understand. One interesting thing about moving to Asia for a number of years was how new phrases took hold in the UK when I came back for holidays, often in a relatively short space of time. 'No brainer' was one that puzzled me greatly at first. It was also the rise of the (commonplace) internet and mobile phone so us expats (of various nationalities) had our own self-developed terms for things like sending text messages. 'Text' as a verb was completely new to me when I returned, and felt very strange. One I can't stand (and I don't know why) is 'reaching out' in the media e.g. 'we've reached out to Sony for comment'.

Sorry - I should have made clear that that is an amalgamation of all the bad reviews (the first page I read at least), not a consensus among them on every point. And the 'promises made to customers' by the phone team seemed to be implied to be made in good faith (this has always been my own experience too). I've edited my post slightly to reflect this. @BackyardBullion it would be worth your while finding that post maybe (or perhaps someone who reads this who knows what or where it was could point it out)? I read it in the last three days on a (then) recent page on one of the recent releases threads, (so it would have been this or a related one, Henry VII, or the SotD).

I'm a bit confused by some of these! The expression 'it's not rocket science' has been in common use here since I were a lad (and I'm no spring chicken!) @dicker. Maybe we had some particularly 'linguistically-forceful' Americans stationed in Kent during the war or something?!! 🤣 Oddly enough, some Americanisms seem to have got here via Australia! My sister for some reason was particularly influenced by Neighbours and Home and Away (the early years) and she's said 'can I get..?' and other things (the one I do notice as grating every time is 'arvo') for almost 40 years! It seems normal to me, and I was surprised to see that one pointed out (though since you did I couldn't agree more!). It's amazing what one filters out at times - in the case of 'can I get' for most of my life it transpires! 'Colorize' is in the Oxford dictionary. It'd be interesting to see when it appeared, it may very well be since the advent of common digital technology. There's a chance it could go back much further though considering the early colorized films. I don't think Joseph and the Extremely Colourful Dreamcoat has quite the same ring to it but that may be me This is a useful one imo as it's distinct from 'coloured'. It usually means to colour (or to have be in colour) something that wasn't originally designed or intended to be, whereas e.g. both monochrome and coloured sketches by Monet exist. 'Gotten' is a fascinating one as it comes from where English changed here, but remained the same as at the time of the settlers in America. There are quite a few others, but I've forgotten them It's been almost two decades since I had a linguist colleague in America, fascinating chap. For example, there's an extremely remote settlement in Peru iirc (it may be Chile or Bolivia) in the Andes where they speak the purest version of some form of 'Welsh' from four hundred odd years ago that exists. It's a funny old world!

Someone posted a link to an employer review website the other day (it may even have been on this thread) and it made for grim reading indeed, alas at the same time making perfect sense. Loyal employees of 20 - 30 years leaving in disgust, a sales team completely removed from the production side, an upper management who simply don't care and are incompetent, sales managers who bully staff to achieve targets, impossible time pressure on the QC staff...all leading to an endless circle of rushed production and despatch, returns, promises made to customers (in good faith by the phone team, mind) that can and will never be fulfilled by the other teams...but management are happy as long as the bottom line is good. One never knows how true these things are, naturally disaffected staff are likely to leave the worst reviews imaginable. But (and hopefully I've amalgamated/summed up the scathing reports fairly) enough of it rings true to me and tallies with what I heard privately from one dealer a few years back. I gave up collecting new Royal Mint stuff with the QBs. Whatever the truth is I personally decided it was too much hassle for the enjoyment I was getting. I'll finish off my Liz proof Sov collection and then I'm done (strangely I've never had a single problem with those, though I know others did this year - I've always thought the Mint must have their 'A team' on the flagship product). It's been like this in general for years, I don't think things will change sadly without a total overhaul of the Mint