TeaTime

I was gifted the first silver proof £1 (1983) coin in 2000.
My first purchase was a Charles II Crown - and i still have it ! 
 

I like to collect small pieces of jewellery made from silver coins.
I saw this silver Japanese Yen made into a small buckle in town this afternoon. I also picked up the 1584 silver sixpence.
Both for £34.

Depends if you want them and for what reason. If it's to sell on then anything over 8g has to be hallmarked to be sold legally in the UK as silver. What guarantee will you have that they are actually sterling silver ?
(There is a lot of (almost certainly not silver )white metal pendants/chains coming out of China stamped 925 - a quick look on Ebay shows similar items selling at £2-£3)
If they are to be gifts then the actual manufacturing/material cost seems reasonable for bespoke items in such a small amount. Just make sure the recipients are not allergic to any metals typically found in Chinesium*
*Not a real word 
 
 

Depends if you want them and for what reason. If it's to sell on then anything over 8g has to be hallmarked to be sold legally in the UK as silver. What guarantee will you have that they are actually sterling silver ?
(There is a lot of (almost certainly not silver )white metal pendants/chains coming out of China stamped 925 - a quick look on Ebay shows similar items selling at £2-£3)
If they are to be gifts then the actual manufacturing/material cost seems reasonable for bespoke items in such a small amount. Just make sure the recipients are not allergic to any metals typically found in Chinesium*
*Not a real word 
 
 

Depends if you want them and for what reason. If it's to sell on then anything over 8g has to be hallmarked to be sold legally in the UK as silver. What guarantee will you have that they are actually sterling silver ?
(There is a lot of (almost certainly not silver )white metal pendants/chains coming out of China stamped 925 - a quick look on Ebay shows similar items selling at £2-£3)
If they are to be gifts then the actual manufacturing/material cost seems reasonable for bespoke items in such a small amount. Just make sure the recipients are not allergic to any metals typically found in Chinesium*
*Not a real word 
 
 

Very canny - collectors of Roos, Kooks & Koalas will want one (or more) of these for completeness...

Very canny - collectors of Roos, Kooks & Koalas will want one (or more) of these for completeness...

Just some sterling silver (I think) for me today. I like the design on this, now just need to learn to take better pictures.

Whilst recently visiting Blackpool Tower I saw this ‘work of art’ of a model of Blackpool Tower made of silver.
I took some photos to share with you all, imagine, £120 for 700oz of silver.
But then again, it was made in 1898. Just four years after the tower was built in 1894.
Imagine polishing that tower. No pun intended accidentally on purpose.
Aside from it being made of silver, it truly is a work of art.

The mint priced me out when standard BU sets went from £10-£15 a set to £40+ per set. Not a price I'm willing to pay.

Rule #1 of buying silver in the UK - VAT really ganks the value of investment in silver.  Buying and selling through conventional dealers will get you a spread of 30% or more, which makes it not worth doing this way.
But . . .
You can buy and sell on the secondary market at manageable spreads.  If you keep an eye out here and the various other places where folks buy and sell silver, you can buy and sell at a far more sane spread.  The going rate for 1oz coins is somewhere about £23 (give or take - maybe a little more with silver going up), and there are people you can buy from around this price point.  Bars in the 10 oz to 1kg range are also worth buying at the right price. 
You need to understand your exit strategy, which is just a fancy way of saying 'How do I flog my coins?'  With silver, buying and selling to dealers isn't cost effective, so your exit strategy for silver will have to be based off selling back to the secondary market.  Therefore you have to pay attention to liquidity - i.e. what people will buy, and at what price you can make a quick sale.  As a starting point, think of tubes of 1oz coins, and bars in the 10 oz to 1kg range.  Take a look in the UK ungraded section for sales to get a sense of the going rate for these on the open market.
Consider also buying gold in the portfolio, unless you really want to bet on silver going to the moon.  The folks in that video are notorious for circulating clickbait about how silver is about to jump in price, and have been running this schtick for years now.  

I mean, honestly. This is just so bloody bad.
These coins you can literally buy by the kilo. They need 100 for this collection.
They couldn't find a better picture?

Half oz of medieval silver coins
Something a bit different

For me; Trying too hard and not quite getting it... Does it really need a Britannia, a lion, stylised waves and a sailing ship (Golden Hind) ?
The company logo reminds me of something that i can't quite put my finger on ! 
I'd take a few at £60 a pop, free postage 😁

Wow, that's a complex question.... Gold by volume is almost twice as heavy as silver - so, for example a cubic centimetre of silver would weigh 10.49g and the same in gold would weigh 19.32g. That would be for pure silver and gold.
So you would need 78g of pure gold to make up the same volume as 43g of pure silver
Sterling silver is 92.5% pure silver.
9ct gold is 37.5% pure gold - usually alloyed with silver. 
Assuming, in the end product, that 62.5% of it is silver . . . . and that's where i give up.
BUT - gold is heavier than silver so it stands to reason that, regardless of purity, you will need more gold than silver to make an equivalent sized piece. 
 

Wow, that's a complex question.... Gold by volume is almost twice as heavy as silver - so, for example a cubic centimetre of silver would weigh 10.49g and the same in gold would weigh 19.32g. That would be for pure silver and gold.
So you would need 78g of pure gold to make up the same volume as 43g of pure silver
Sterling silver is 92.5% pure silver.
9ct gold is 37.5% pure gold - usually alloyed with silver. 
Assuming, in the end product, that 62.5% of it is silver . . . . and that's where i give up.
BUT - gold is heavier than silver so it stands to reason that, regardless of purity, you will need more gold than silver to make an equivalent sized piece. 
 

Wow, that's a complex question.... Gold by volume is almost twice as heavy as silver - so, for example a cubic centimetre of silver would weigh 10.49g and the same in gold would weigh 19.32g. That would be for pure silver and gold.
So you would need 78g of pure gold to make up the same volume as 43g of pure silver
Sterling silver is 92.5% pure silver.
9ct gold is 37.5% pure gold - usually alloyed with silver. 
Assuming, in the end product, that 62.5% of it is silver . . . . and that's where i give up.
BUT - gold is heavier than silver so it stands to reason that, regardless of purity, you will need more gold than silver to make an equivalent sized piece. 
 

Or, if feeling extravagant - a pack of Stuyvesant to share amongst friends. LOL

Yes, it’s funny but I always see the Queen in my mind exactly as she was on a pound note. And I used to spend my dinner money on 10 JPS for only 50p 😝 

Release like this are a "necessary evil " and it's easy for advanced collectors to dump on them.  The industry needs cross genre products to drag fresh blood into the interest and get people into collecting and buying coins.   
I started collecting circulation commemorative 50p's and its  lead into opening so many different avenues for me  with this hobby/interest and now business.  
The biggest challenge the RM will have is pulling new people into the interest with a product aka coinage thats practically become obsolete for some generations already,  give it another 10 or so years and kids of that   generation will not even be handling coins they will never  have a coin in their pocket go to the shop to spend it and receive others coins back in change.   
As a child I felt rich with a newton £1 note in my pocket and I loved the massive 50p's  always thought the queen looked pretty (2nd portrait by Arnold Machin)   this is how I remember queen. Usually I'd be given a £1 note off the old man to walk to the shop and by a packet of fags for him I still remember 10 players No 6 were 76 & 1/2  pence a packet  and would get 10p for going, this was the time where  half pence sweets were a thing, the prise was the 3 pence sweets the white chocolate fish and chips for those who remember those.........There is so much nostalgia with handling currency  going forward I doubt there will be the same for those  tapping a card or phone for future generations.  
 
 

@RiverbankSilverbeautiful delivery as always 😁💪

Got my 2-coin set today.  Just magnificent!  The design and detail are great.  There’s even a spray of bubbles coming off the waves.  Nicely done.  Love the side-by-side contrast of the two proof finishes.

Just for interest, the quarter uses a font called Albertus (Identifont - Albertus).  It has a stem on the capital U, which does make it look lower case.

People mean lots of different things when they talk about quality.  Probably not an exhaustive list, but here is how I would break it down.
Intricacy and fineness of the design.  This is a factor of the time and skill invested into the design and 'mastering'.  Constant across all individual coins of the same design. Depth and detail in the coin.  This is a factor of the capability of the machines, and the ambition of the design.  Could vary between first and last strike. Chance of individual coins having acceptable levels of faults.  This is a factor of the quality and maintenance of the machines and raw materials, the quality of handling, the ability and willingness of the QC process to find issues.  Varies coin to coin. Number 1 is going to be very subjective.  RM release a lot more designs each year than they used to, and whether one is better than another varies with personal opinion.
Number 2, the relief and detail inherent in the designs, have clearly worsened.  e.g. In bullion, it is obvious to see the newer sovereigns are flatter and more 'jelly' like than they used to be.  I don't think that is disputable.  And with the albeit limited sample of microscope photos I have taken, you can clearly see the detail in proof sovereigns has diminished over the last e.g. 30 years.  And there is an obvious trade off in the real world.  A highly ambitious design will probably cost more, be harder to mint, and will generate more faulty coins.
Before this is a 100% Royal Mint bashing exercise, I would say that I saw similar reduction in detail with Perth Mint coins across the same time period.
Whether 3 has become worse in absolute terms, I honestly don't know.  From all the voices on the forum, clearly it has.  But I haven't been collecting long enough, and I don't own enough 'older' proof coins to see that objectively.  Coin for coin, I have no idea what the return rates used to be.  I think the return rates for everything, from cars to lightbulbs, is much higher than it used to be (for all sorts of reasons), so again that is very difficult to compare.  I know that people are now able to scrutinise coins in far more detail.  I also know that people on this forum are far more discerning than the average punter.
My personal experience buying proof coins from RM is that the first time I receive a proof it probably has a 70% chance of having unacceptable levels of faults.  I will send it back and the second time it will have maybe a 20% chance of having unacceptable faults.  This has happened multiple times.  The difference between those numbers is too large to be a coincidence.
So... one must conclude that RM has a systemic bias, either intentional or not, between the first release of coins and later fulfilling of returns.  I am sure conspiracy theories abound.  To be explicit, an example of an unintentional bias could be that the returns are fulfilled with later runs, where they have learned about the characteristics of the coin, are producing lower numbers, and therefore the chance of coins having errors is reduced.  And example of an intentional bias could be that they believe the majority of their sales will be to people who don't scrutinise the coins closely, so they hold back the higher quality coins for those that bother to complain.
Discuss.

With regards to point 2, nearly all national mints have been reducing the relief of their currency coins.
The US quarter has been deteriorating since 1998. Here are some later examples I found after a quick search. The descent into spaghetti hair is very obvious.