ageka

Thats some serious cross hatching

I am sure Scottish will forgive me cause he is fantastic

From a famous painter called Ingrès

To be honest I only like pretty girls in the flesh or in gold

And I prefer gold ; less bother

I would say that BU should mean MS63 or better Uncirculated and Brilliant

Needless to say that a several vendors call an MS60 a BU which it is not

It should be about the same as Choice Uncirculated or MS63 or better

FDC Fleur de Coin is another abused term . It should be MS65 or better but is abused from MS60 onwards

In Europe the most abused term is probably Bankfresh which means in condition as received by the bank which is MS60 and upwards

Mintfresh is supposed to be used for MS63 or better

But since hardly anybody can grade the terms really mean very little

Slabs are a business pure and simple

I have no slabbed coins

I might consider slabbing some to get more money from them

I do not think that either THAT kite or that coin are in danger of being struck by lightning

< On the other hand, 20 ton hydrolic shop presses can be had for less than $200... it ought to be possible to adapt one of those to press a coin. >

 

Consider this, the smallest US coins, the cent and dime, are struck at 40 tons.  Silver dollar or silver round size is around 140 tons.

I is not clear whether you mean a clamping press like is used by those guys

that make cheap copycoins

You copy a coin in dental plastic then you put a gold blank in it and then you pump up the pressure to 10 tons or such

What you need is a real striking press with like 70 ton hydrolic striking power

otherwise there is no strike lustre

Yeah, that German page is very cool.... now if I could just read German...

yes it is very strange that companies being able to put up a web page

do not take the time to translate it in english

You can start your coining from 1190 euro on

http://members.mcnon.com/gertmale/Pragesta...agestation.html

Attached is a gif which by the board has been jpegged

I am told by a software engineer friend of mine most people do not know anymore what a bitmap file is

I save everything in bitmap file with no quality loss

for coins I use jpeg for stockcharts I use gif ( graphic format )

attached the post in jpeg

Thanks.  I just got an 1890 half sovereign from a local gold buyer for BV+2%.  That was my first jubilee gold.

That looks like a good deal

Any sovereign or half before early 1900's is difficult to get for that price

Any chance you could post a scan or picture ?

I buy all of my world gold from a few small timers I trust, usually.  Getting hold of a tough type may send me to Camino Coin sometimes, but generally, I get a piece or two a month from a little hole in the wall shop in the combat zone , downtown in Richmond.

 

  I may try your source pretty soon.

He may refuse selling by mail

On the other hand this guy sells fully insured by mail

His prices however are not allways up to date

So email for price and availability and conditions

http://www.eurogold.be/UK/main.htm

Yes, I meant Victoria.  Thanks for the link.

Officially they have the young head with knight slaying dragon reverse

in XF for melt plus 2 % but I would not count on it

because these guys are visited monthly by one of the leading British ebayers

and regularly by all kinds of american dealers

I phoned twice to buy a Double Eagle and twice got the answer that an american

had bought the complete inventory

That may be their standard answer

I've had PVC gunk on lots of silver but never on gold.  Still, it can happen.  With gold there's less chance of any attack on the surface since gold isn't a reactive metal like silver is.

 

  BTW, is a young head half sovereign in VF usually worth only bullion value?

What I showed was a full sovereing of Elisabeth two uncirculated starts in 1957

( is that what you mean by a young head or do you mean young Victoria ? )

In Belgium all coins on the national list can be bought in XF or better

for like 2% over melt at any exchange agent

Less then XF should not be sold unless a real numismatic

Attached the leading exchange agent that publishes his prices continuously on teletext and internet for the other exchange agents to use

The one I know will add one euro per coin

The prices listed for double eagles forget them ; they only buy and then sell to americans

http://www.gold4ex.be/servlet/javaparser.c...st_or_new&lg=nl

Congrats.  It was likely just some degraded PVC.

You were right with your first suggestion about pvc

I made a mistake in guessing how long I had those coins

Turns out they have been sitting in a bankvault in 2X2's for 35 years

However the older sovereigns George and Edwards were not affected

So it must be a combination of surface copper and like you say pvc plasticizer

Normally anything acetone will dissolve only takes a minute so this is my

first experience were I needed such a long time

and also my first experience with pvc problems on gold

Whatever it was it came off after 60 minutes in acetone

Which goes down well with us dialuppers. You're pictures are too large for my connection to cope with. I couldn't even wait for the proper "quote" button to load. Well i'm not waiting 10 minutes.

I am on ADSL but because of room restrictions my screen is only 15 inch

so with favourites open I only see three quaters of the coin

and scrolling keeps it at another three quarters

I just got Lance Armstrong winning the tour de france in 2003

proof and max 5000 and certificate

I like the finish of these coins

my 10x loupe is a dual lense, no brand. It costed me a few euro in a local store where they measure your eyes and sell glasses and contact lenses. I tested the loupe myself, befoer I bought it. They had two different ones and this one was significanlty better than the other one that only had a single lense. The distortion of a dual lense is less. An even better slution would be a triplet, with 3 lenses, but they didn't have one available. They could order one, but is would be significantly more expensive.

In my opinion any lense from germany at whatever cost will be allright

For 20 years I had a loupe without spec : probably a 3X which worked

very well

the 10 X aspheric from Eschenbach which I got now with built in lighting with a LED

is really too much for everyday use

But it sure will show up a bad acetone wash ; so I rewash

It's pretty humid here(central Virginia), too. The water table is so high that bored wells are productive as shallow as 20-30 feet.  I've developed an allergy to mold spores which seem to be airborne here year-round.

I only have to go one feet deep to have water forever because the canal is 10 feet above ground and water seeps out

In the rainy season for some days water level is half an inch above ground

I was diagnosed with an atypical allergy and take Zaditen year around for my allergy they probably missed out on spores because me working for Monsanto

they tested 30 chemicals and then went on to parasites and other exotic things

Since all tests were negative I got pills ( no innoculation determined like innoculation against grasspores alleregy )

Calcium chloride is useful for large cabinets and other enclosed spaces.  It's usually loaded into a fine mesh bag and suspended over a plastic bucket.  The water it attracts from the air works its way to the bottom of the bag and drips into the bucket.

 

  The water always carries some of the chemical with it into the bucket, really just a trace, but enough to cause corrosion.  It's a method best confined to closets for clothing, IMO.  Silica gel is my choice for keeping moisture out of my storage boxes and bins.

Amazing I never heard of the calcium chloride trick and I live in a country were it seems to rains 5 days out of seven

In fact I got an hygro meter and most of the time I live between 70 and 90 % moisture because on top of all I live on the riverbank of an above ground canal that seeps water all the time into the underground

Thanks for the input!

 

As for the customs, items coming from within the EU I need not worry about. Coming from outside the EU, I have had a couple of packages that I had to pick up from customs -and paying the customs fee .  At least with this shipment I will not have to worry. A relative is coming to Finland from the US in august. I am ordering a 2006 Krause and some other items to be brought. The prices are much cheaper than in Finland.

I ordered my Krause from amazon.de germany

Original american print

I was amazed how cheaply they can get in into euope and I seem to remember because of the price they shipped it free to belgium and NO custom problems

Sir Sisu

As I understand it most low priced balances come from china and some local guy puts his name on the product

a 50 gram at 0.01 gram would be nice

Another must is to have a calibrated weight at least to check the maximum of

50 gram

Then you have a zero and 50 grams check ( range check )

what happens at 10 -20-30-40 grams would be a mystery ( because you cannot check linearity ) but is acceptable

since with an accuracy of 0.01 you should not be off by more then 0.03 grams

anywhere in between

The only vendor that has the accuracy and the calibrating weight asks 14.95 euro

http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt...item=7530259418

He has them all the time so do not worry about the 2 hours the auction runs

He also has all the other ranges

For a loupe I really splurged and bought a real German Eschenbach LED loupe

10X in Germany from an online shop that only sells in germany

but since I speak the lingo they agree to ship to Belgium

http://www.eschenbach.com/preview.php?pid=109

This loupe is perfect to look for problems but not to "enjoy" your coins

because with the LED side lighting it highlights all problems like drying stains

from dips and dust and lint etc

Oh and spending obsolete money is illegal here because it's demonetised. People tend to hit the roof if you slip them a similar sized old five pence for a new ten pence. They hate it.

 

Although they'll happily take old 50 pences because some vending machines accept them as £2 coins and there's a profit to be made out of them.

Some of the money of Thailand looks like a 2 euro piece

I got one in change whithout noticing it

Our parking machines measure so many points that sometimes even real coins

are rejected