Stuntman

What a lovely idea. I don't think you will regret these purchases at all and I hope the two Wreath Crowns will give you and your parents a lot of pleasure when you find them. I only have the 1930 in my collection but it's one of my very favourite coins.

^^^ Nice definition. I wouldn't one either. Wanting to own one of these post-fingered seconds does nothing for me. Trial by ordeal, more like... 😉

We would have a bump-er amount of ounces.

There's a very decent 1928 Wreath Crown here and not excessively priced (although not cheap): https://colincooke.com/coin_pages/crowns.html They also have a 1932 and 1934 Wreath, but at somewhat different price points - plus some fabulous earlier Crowns including an Oliver Cromwell example. Or try here (1928 and 1933 Wreaths at cheaper prices but not as nice): https://www.thecoinking.co.uk/pages/search-results-page?collection=crowns&tab=products&page=2 Or here (decent examples from most Wreath years, including another 1934): https://saltfordcoins.com/collections/english-crowns?page=2 I have bought coins from all 3 of these dealers in the past, but have no interest in, or affiliation, to any of them. Good luck to anyone making any decisions!

Regarding the Midland Coin Fair on Sun 14th Nov - I can't make that date because I'm going to the races at Cheltenham with free corporate hospitality so I'm not going to pass that up! But definitely another time...

My 1853 PT and 1854 OT. Both of these are nice honest examples of lovely big copper coins, which are great to hold in-hand. The 1853 is the nicer coin. Neither cost me very much money (£60 delivered in total, from two different reputable coin dealers, less than 5 years ago).

As Bruce says, it's all about which combination of things occur on which penny in which year that drives the rarity and hence the price. For example in 1853 the Ornamental Trident is the more common one, whereas in 1854 the Plain Trident is the more common one. So if you just want an example of each, buy the more common one from each year... I'm certainly not a dedicated penny collector, although I do have about 35 different predecimal pennies, of which 6 are copper and the rest are bronze. A few of them are in UNC condition and a few of them are rare - but none of them are both UNC and rare, sadly! Among the rarer ones in my collection, I have an 1897 O'NE, a 1903 Open 3, a 1919 KN and a 1926 ME. None of them is in particularly good condition but I just like the fact that these coins are fairly rare. If you're into predecimal pennies, you'll know what those descriptions mean!

I like them for their history as well. There are some very serious penny collectors out there - and with deep pockets, but they tend to specialise in the bronze coinage more than the copper coinage, and try to collect as many of the different Freeman numbers as they can. Some of them are very rare indeed, and the differences between some of the varieties are very hard to spot. So penny collecting can keep someone interested for many years attempting to amass getting on for 200 separate coins, but most of them are very similar and the type of collector is quite different from what I imagine many of us here are like. There are some very knowledgeable penny collectors and a wealth of information available at www.predecimal.com if you are keen to find out more. They are a friendly bunch too, but the traffic over there is quite limited.

The pre-1860 British copper coinage is really nice to collect, although I do agree that if you want a copper 1860 penny, it will cost you at least the price of a couple of ounces of gold. I don't have all that many pieces and am not particularly interested in date runs, but I do have various British copper coins from various monarchs, for variety. Farthings from 1799, 1821 and 1835 Halfpennies from 1721, 1799, 1807, 1826, 1837 and 1855 Pennies from 1797, 1806, 1826, 1831, 1853 and 1854 The cartwheel Twopence from 1797 A Half Farthing from 1844 And a Quarter Farthing from 1852! This covers George I, George III, George IV, William IV and Victoria. I don't have a George II copper coin but I would like a nice halfpenny in about VF condition and if I saw one with nice eye appeal at a reasonable price I'd probably buy it. My favourites are probably the 1797 cartwheel penny and twopence, and the 1799 farthing and halfpenny. Having all four denominations of these Matthew Boulton new coinage makes a nice little collection on its own I think, and the coins themselves are impressive things to hold. The 1799 halfpenny I have is particularly lovely.

Yes, I can see how that can feel sad. At least in my case, the coins were 'only' 1969 50p coins and they made hundreds of millions of them, so even the mintiest of them has very little monetary value.

@TheShinyStuff - you are right, this is exactly how it starts... 😁 Take the blue pill or the red pill now! PS - Good luck with your collection of silver crowns. Obvious next steps are to go back one further Monarch and find a 1935 Silver Jubilee Crown (nice and cheap) and a 1928-1936 Wreath Crown (somewhat less cheap, and with the potential to be ruinously expensive...) 😉

I suspect that the bullion sovereign mintage figures since about 2012 have been fairly high - but so what, it doesn't matter. Most of us I suspect are merely interested in the numbers as a matter of record, rather than about scarcity etc. Basically, none of the recent bullion sovereigns from 2015 onwards are particularly scarce in my opinion. The sovereigns from 2003 to 2008 are relatively scarce, but still not too difficult to find if you really want a particular date.

Many people will have received a product from the RM that doesn't have a problem with it. Equally, many other people will have received an inferior product from the RM. So it's completely down to personal experience, luck of the draw, whatever. And if you buy gold from them rather than silver, it shouldn't develop milk spots 😁

Yep - the RM say that this information is commercially sensitive. All reasonable people would disagree 😉

That's a mad amount of money for a Godless Florin of that quality in my opinion. I have two: one that I think I overpaid for back in 2015 and another in higher grade that I bought in 2019. At some point I will offload my spare. Perhaps if they all attract mad money now, I will be quids in!

I like some of the products that the RM produces but I really don't like their online buying process and the quality of the product and/or service that I have received from them when buying directly can charitably be described as 'variable'. Consequently, I buy directly from the RM either if they are the only dealer/maker who can currently supply the product that I want, or if they are significantly cheaper than all other UK dealers for that product. So my advice to the RM would be: listen to the feedback that you receive, keep making interesting and nicely-designed coins and bars, try your hardest to maintain excellent quality standards, try to improve the timeliness of your customer service, and above all - overhaul your ridiculously hateful website buying process so that you don't have to pre-load your account with money before you can actually buy anything. I just want to log in to my account, add items to my basket, proceed to checkout and then pay by debit or credit card. Exactly as I can do with Atkinsons and BBP. Thank you.

I received a couple of very minty specimens of 1969 50p coins in 1990, over the counter in the betting shop that I was working in. I asked the shop manager's permission to exchange £1 from my own pocket for these two 50p coins. I still have both of them; one is better than the other, but both are virtually UNC. It just goes to show that you never know when something like this will turn up, 20-plus years later!

I've been to this fair about 5 times, back when I was more interested in predecimal UK coins, but I haven't been since about 2017. It would be good to go again sometime if there was the potential for a Forum meet up. I'm about 75 minutes away. The joy of this fair is that you can see loads of different coins and get a better appreciation of what sort of stuff you might want to collect. And you can sell to the dealers there - I've done this a couple of times.

I have seven of them including two spares of the 2013 and 2014 £20 coins. Four different £20 coins and the £50 Britannia coin. I am happy to retain these five different coins in my collection and would happily offload the two spares for £20 each. Back in 2015 I sold my other two 2013 and 2014 spares for £25 each, so overall I'm up on the deal 😀

I bought one from BBP a few weeks ago (see the other thread on this) and the quality of my particular coin is absolutely fine. It's not the sort of coin that you would want to handle. It's a visually impressive piece of silver that is best left within its protective capsule. Personally I think that these will do well in the future, but that is not my motivation for owning it. I also agree that the 2022 proof sovereigns will do well, but they are nowhere near as visually impressive as a 1 kilo silver bullion coin with a face value of £500. Good luck with your decision!

Yep, if you want to hold the coin it's pretty hard to get one in the UK without paying high premiums and sales taxes. Hope you like the coin when you get it, Pete. Do you have all ten? Well done if so, and looking forward to seeing some pictures! I have 3 of them but I would almost certainly by a 1 oz platinum Completer if they do release one.

I have not registered my interest with the RM, on the assumption that these will be freely available to buy from the RM and other authorised distributors. I would far rather buy them from a company such as Atkinsons, Chards or BBP rather than 'register my interest' with the RM. Bah humbug!

My own coins will remain unslabbed and ungraded so that I can enjoy the pleasure of ownership (for me) to the full and I will always take good care of them. But each to their own. I did once buy a slabbed predecimal penny - at an auction, cheaply, because no-one else bid on it (£18 including all fees for an 1889 penny, slabbed and graded AU58 by NGC - EF in UK old grade-speak) but I carefully broke it out of the slab when I got home and it now sits gloriously raw alongside its predecimal penny brothers and sisters.

Longest I had to wait was about 4 months last year for the Royal Mint to replace a returned bullion coin made of Platinum that I originally ordered and received in March 2020. Their customer service was appalling and I had to chase multiple times through multiple channels until I received my replacement.

^^^ Not always. Occasionally some of their products are very competitively priced. And I've always had good service from them, although Atkinsons are usually my first choice of bullion dealer