The Standard Guide to Grading British Coins

This is the version with black and white (greyscale) images throughout. For the full colour version see here.  

“This really is an incredibly important book that can easily earn it’s value back each time a new coin is purchased! Online sources of old coins (especially eBay) are full of badly described and over-graded examples. All too often, coins that are only worth a couple of pounds seem to sell for £30, £50 or even more. The reason they sell for vastly more than what they are worth is because the sellers’ call them ‘VF’ (for example) when in reality they are only ‘Fair’ (for example) and lots of ill-informed coin collectors seem to rather naively believe these descriptions!

Just recently I saw a GVF (Good VF) George IV farthing with some quite ugly edge knocks, labelled as ‘Lustrous’ sell for £29.00. It wasn’t lustrous at all, it had previously been cleaned and had some very noticeable wear. Clearly the seller had never seen a truly lustrous example, as most of the sellers genuinely seem to be ignorant, rather than consciously conspiring to defraud. If I were selling that coin on predecimal.com I wouldn’t have the cheek to ask more than £4.00 for it! Even without the edge knock damage and the damage caused by it being cleaned I would have only priced in at about £12.00. Someone somewhere is treasuring a £29.00 coin that one day they will learn is worth less than £5.00. As a serious coin dealer, that infuriates me. It puts the industry in a bad light and such discoveries made by young collectors potentially put them off coin collecting forever!”

I know that as the publisher of this book I can hardly be considered un-biased, but I’m am very much writing this as a coin dealer and I truly believe that if you buy or have any involvement at all in British coins (1797-1970) and have been involved for less than 10 years (or more if it’s only a passing interest) then you really do need this book, no matter how good you may think you are at coin grading. It’s now available as an eBook), so you can take it anywhere and there simply is no excuse for buying over-graded and over-priced coins on eBay or anywhere else!” – C H Perkins, Boxing Day 2013.

The Standard Guide to Grading British Coins is a photographic and descriptive record of the recognised states of preservation (grades) of all British coin types from 1797 to 1970.

The “Where’s wear” of British numismatics! The first book of its kind – a detailed photographic and descriptive record of all British modern milled pre-decimal coins (1797 to 1970) in all their collectable grades.

The grade of a coin dictates it’s value. The age, type or specific date are all of less importance than the condition. But what is Fine, VF, EF or Uncirculated? If you are new to coin collecting or specialise in different coin types, how can you say without doubt that a coin is a certain grade? Until now you could only guess. Now, at least you can make a very educated guess based on the images shown in The Standard Guide to Grading British Coins.

The greyscale photos of every obverse and reverse type are illustrated at 2x or greater magnification (the current paperback has black and white images, the eBook is in full colour) and the text describes where to look for the wear first. An invaluable guide to anyone who collects coins, especially at the moment, with huge amounts of over-graded coins being offered on the internet.

A note on the versions of this title

This title was first published in 2009, there have been three main editions of this book:

• The first edition (2009) was a colour hardback with a brown cover – this book is out of print
• This second edition (2014, available on this page) is a paperback with a blue cover and black and white (greyscale) images
• The third edition (2026) is a paperback with a red cover and is printed in full colour, available here

The eBook version on Amazon is full colour throughout.