A short one. Three days after the last update, this is about the checks that decide whether a sale counts, prompted by two sales a reader pointed out.
A bag of coins is not a coin
Royal Mint and bank bags hold 20, 50 or 100 coins, and they sell on eBay for one price. A sealed bag of 2021 2p coins made £23.58 in August and had been sitting in the queue as if it were one 2p. The checker now reads a listing that is the bag itself (sealed bag, full bag, bag of 50, three full bags) as a bulk lot and sets it aside, the same as it already did for job lots, sets and "choose from the list" listings. A single coin "from a sealed bag" is still a single coin, and so is a bullion coin sold in its own mint pouch.
Some seventy-five bag sales that had counted towards a coin's median go back through the check. The 2023 Capercaillie 10p, where bags of 50 made up to £160 each, is the coin that moves most.
The right coin for a graded sale
Auction houses write a sale as the house sees it: "Great Britain Charles III gold Proof King George II 100 Pounds (1 oz) 2023 PR70 Ultra Cameo NGC". That is the George II coin from the British Monarchs series, not the plain one ounce gold bullion coin, and the design name in the title should have moved it across. It did not, because the checker matched design names as fragments: "Charles I" and "Charles II" both sit inside "Charles III", so three monarchs tied and nothing won. Design names now have to match as whole words, so the George II sales move to their own coin, and the same rule applies to every sale the checker moves from now on.
Signing in to track a sale
If you have sold coins to us, the tracking page now asks you to sign in with the account that made the submission before it shows the offer, your email, your return address or our inspection photos, and before you can accept, decline or change an address. Anyone else who has the reference sees the status alone. Until now the reference on its own was enough, and references are short. Everyone who has submitted since late September signed in to do it, so your account already owns your submission. Earlier sellers are matched on the email address they used.
Smaller things
- The half sovereign values guide was pricing everything off gold at £1,750 an ounce. Its title, ranges and value table now follow the live gold price, like the sovereign guide.
- The shilling, £5 coin and guinea guides answer the question in the first line, and the guinea table gains the 20 guinea and 1,600 guinea rows people kept searching for.
- A few thousand pages for coins we have no price or writing for yet have been taken out of the sitemap until they have something to say. They are still on the site.
If a figure on the site looks wrong to you, the Contact page is the fastest way to tell us. Both of the sales above came from one message.