Hello gents and ladies, firstly my apologies, pls don't look on this as an advert for what I'm selling on Ebay- I am honestly VERY interested in your proffesional opinion. If u look at the item I list at the end you will see a very large watermark which was given to my fathers bank in the 50's by the royal mint, can anyone shed any light (pardon the pun) on such items i.e. are these common etc?

See here:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...AMESE%3AIT&rd=1

Is there any certification that say that it was from the Royal Mint and also made by Waterlows and Sons. Thanks.

Very interesting. I am assuming that there has to be some sort of certificate that came along with it, or else it could easily be mistaken by a cheap Chinese copy, that is if they went all the way to make such. Could it be possible that such sign is engraved somewhere in the portrait?

I don't know anything really about them, but there is a book you can purchase that might help. It's called

The Die Proofs of Waterlow & Sons – Part 1: Great Britain & the Empire to 1960 by Colin Fraser and Robson Lowe

This work relates information from two sources: the four manuscript index volumes that record all dies prepared by Waterlows between 1883 and 1960, and the printer’s archive of die proofs.


Hope it helps.

Thanks for your replies guys, don't know of any certificate with this, I used to go and work the weekends at my dads work in EC2 when i was in my early teens and this had pride of place in their boardroom-that's all I remember. My father was 'awarded' it when he was forced to take early retirement as the bank was moving abroad.
As I said though I know little about such things but it really is great condition and the quality looks supurb, Waterlows was mentioned by my father, I'll be honest I don't know who and what Waterlow does?

Hi Steve,

I went to do some searching and found your posting in one of the forum.

Maybe it will be good if I just add on information to this topic. I believe you have provide this additional information earlier in the other forum.

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My first post! U lot look very knowledgable so I wonder if you could help me with the following, my father used to work for an australian bank based in the city of london and when he retired they gave him a rather weird present, he had always admired it from afar!
It is approx 3foot by 2ft in a wooden box with an oval frontage-switch on the top and when you turn it on there appears in the window a large watermark of the queen, he tells me that this is from around 1952 and was made by Waterlows?
Any info of it's worth would be appreciated along with your thoughts.
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Derrick

You're right that was me-I had forgotten about that!!! at that time I was looking and asking lots of different companies and got no where really, sorry to double up on my questioning.

It's all right. Steve. Yes, you should asked around for more information on this interesting antique. I believe someone may know about this and possible that there were only a handful of these items produced during the early 1950s. It's great to have you here. I am also just as new as you in this forum.

Have you tried contacting the folks at the website below?

http://www.waterlow.stamps.org.uk/

They might be just the folks to answer your questions.

Dave