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That conveniently brings me to the New Website.
As I have said above:
1. It’s bigger – more items, and it is still growing.
2. It’s better – faster reacting.
3. Everything is illustrated, even the cheapest of coins, pamphlets and offprints.
4. You can now pay using any one of the usual credit and debit cards.
5. The entire site is searchable.
Well, I say that everything is illustrated, but there is the odd item that has escaped us. It does not mean that we haven’t got it, only that it is not worthwhile doing just one or two books, it really needs about 20 gathered together.
Using the Search tool: if you want to find a particular book, put the title, or as much of it you can remember, into the “Search” box, click on the Search button and await results. If you can’t remember the title then try the author’s name. That will bring up every occurrence of that name in the database.
If I can’t remember the title, or the author’s name, I say to my wife, “you know, it’s the thingy book by What’s-his-name, you must know the one I mean”, what I have to do is to feed her one or more ‘key’ words.
You have to box clever on this one. Putting in the word ‘british’, for example, brings up an impossible number to wade through, and making your request slightly more explicit by adding ‘Museum’ only reduces the number to just over 150. Putting in ‘British Museum Copper’ brings up just 10 hits – and you have found our stock of Peck catalogues.
Putting in ‘peck’ (it is not case sensitive) brings up 33 hits, for not only do you get all of the copies of his master work, it also brings up all the British Numismatic Journals where he has written an article, and the coins in stock which have been attributed using his catalogue, providing that we have put his name in, in full. It also brings up one book which it is difficult to see why – until you realise that ‘peck’ is part of the word ‘s-peck-led’ in the description.
You are sometimes also given the facility to search within the results.
A tip — If you are having no luck with ‘China’, try ‘chinese’, which brings up more and different entries, so it is not quite as daft as you might think ! Similarly, searching for ‘french’ instead of ‘France’ brought up 96 items instead of 71.
You can also view books, or coins, by category. How do you do that? Go to the olive coloured panel on the left of any page and click on ‘Books for Sale’.
This brings up 47 icons (pictures of books). These are not all that we have in stock. Each picture is the front of two or more pages full of books in that category that we have for sale. Clicking on an icon you will bring up the first page. At the centre of the bottom of the page you will see the number of pages more that we have of books in that category. You can navigate each one in turn by clicking on the arrows – on the right arrow to go forward, on the left to go back.
Some of the categories are broad: offprints, for example, brings up nearly 60 pages, each with ten items. Other categories are smaller.
There are several categories for tokens: 17th century, 18th century, 19th century, British General and Miscellaneous, and World Tokens. Nothing mysterious there – specialist works will be in one of the first three and those books that have more than one category of token in them will be in the general category. Foreign tokens are under World Tokens.
Much the same applies to ancient coins – Celtic, greek, roman, byzantine – obvious. Those books that have more than one category within them will be under “General ancients”.
If you are looking for ‘hoards’ then do remember that as well as all those things listed under that category, practically all BNJ and NC volumes will have hoard reports in them.
You may now pay by credit or debit card. We can also accept payments through PayPal, but there is a charge for doing so. They charge us 3.5%, and we do need to pass it on. We’d prefer not to use it for transactions within the UK if it can be avoided, but it is probably the best way of paying small amounts from overseas.
Costs are increasing. This was brought to my attention recently when we stopped at a motorway service station. Whilst my wife made for the loo I went to get us a coffee, and was horrified to find that a decent-sized cup of something nice and strong was £2.95 – which in my language is £3 !
The Token Book
One trade customer who I am sure will not mind being quoted, writes:
Your new book is a breath of fresh air for token enthusiasts and long overdue when you look at what everyone was working with. I’m sure its obvious quality and sensible price will bring even more collectors into the hobby. Congratulations on such a professional piece of work.
Writing it was interesting and instructive. We learned a great deal. I had initially thought that it would have taken about six months to complete, but it took fourteen months of concentrated effort, so it is a shame for us that our work is not being rewarded by everyone buying it directly from us; that way we would get more reward for writing it, and therefore feel like writing more, but that’s life.
A collector writes : What a fabulous catalogue! Congratulations! Payment en route.
I can see why I didn't get any of the Daniel Mendoza tokens in the recent DNW auction.
For those who are unfamiliar with 18th century tokens, or boxing, Daniel Mendoza was a prize fighter and England’s sixteenth Heavy-weight Champion from 1792 to 1795. In 1789 he opened his own boxing academy and published a book entitled The Art of Boxing which promulgated his modern “scientific” style boxing, from which every subsequent boxer has learned the art of pugilism. In earlier times, boxing matches had been a bit like a game of conkers, the boxers had stood still and bashed away at each other, each hoping to batter his opponent into submission, or insensibility, by brute force. Mendoza brought in the use of defensive strategies: ducking, side-stepping, moving around, and blocking punches if they could not be avoided. Using such skills Mendoza was able to beat heavier and taller opponents. In his day he was so popular that the London press reported one of his bouts ahead of the news of the storming of the Bastille, which marked the start of the French Revolution !
Mendoza was also remarkable in that he was jewish, and that at one of his bouts people were charged money to attend a sporting event for the first time.
In 1795 Mendoza learned a new lesson when he fought “Gentleman" John Jackson at Hornchurch in Essex for the championship. For Jackson, it was a five-four-three affair. He had the advantage by being five years younger, he was four inches taller, and three stone heavier. He won in nine rounds, finally gaining victory by grabbing Mendoza’s long hair with one hand whilst pounding his head with the other. After that Mendoza got a haircut, and since then boxers have customarily kept their hair short to avoid a repetition of such an avoidable mishap.
Like many boxers since, Mendoza made and spent a fortune. His activities during his life included a tour of Britain giving boxing demonstrations. He even appeared in a pantomime entitled Robinson Crusoe or Friday Turned Boxer. He opened a boxing academy at the Lyceum in the Strand, and eventually became the landlord of a pub.
So, tokens that feature Mendoza, the father of modern boxing, national champion, tick a lot of boxes: he is of international renown, jewish and a boxing champion, and these days token collecting is global, well, certainly tokens are collected in the UK, the US and the Antipodes, so no surprise then that prices for them are high, particularly in the USA !
More comments on The Token Book
Someone wrote that of his collection of thirty 17th-century tokens, six were not in the book. Now no-one knows exactly how many tokens were issued around the period 1648 to 1680, but an educated guess would be around 20,000. The Norweb collection consists of seven volumes so far, all of them bigger than The Token Book, and there is the largest volume yet to come, and the Norweb collection is by no means complete ! So to expect to find all your tokens in our single volume is obviously hopelessly optimistic. But, fear not, to overcome the problem we had a cunning solution: we made a selection. As well as the spectacular and interesting pieces, we included many of the more common pieces from each county.
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Had we not made such a selection you could have expected only about 1/6, i.e., 5 of a random sample of 30 to be in the catalogue. The fact that 24 turned up out of 30, i.e., over 83%, means that our selection process has been very successful indeed !
Another commented: A lot of your prices are wrong. So what? The prices were those prevailing over the period in which the book was written. A lot of coins sell every day, I have just seen a very common coin-weight selling on e-bay for a price that is lunatic. But as another writer said to me, when someone writes the perfect catalogue and everyone’s opinions co-incide then business will stop!
Isn’t it funny how those who have written little or nothing make the loudest complaints, or have the most to say ? They are a bit like those folk that enjoy the facilities that clubs and societies provide, but who contribute nothing towards the actual running of the club. Or those that make illegal downloads from the internet of copyright material.
Thieving banks !
A nice chap in Oz e-mailed that he wanted a particular book for his research. Happily, we had one in stock, so were able to supply it. It was despatched and he arranged for payment through his bank, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (Total £26 - £20 for the book, and £6 for postage). These were vicious enough, he informed us, charging him 32 Oz dollars (almost £20) for the privilege. He won’t, I suspect, go to them again in a hurry. Paypal would have done the job for about £2.
However, that is not all, imagine our surprise on finding out at the foot of the letter that our bank sent us, telling us that our account had been credited, that another £6 had been deducted.
Furious, I rang them to find out why they had deducted almost a quarter of the amount we had been sent ! After brow-beating some poor, clueless, indian girl at a call centre somewhere in Asia, I discovered that our bank, HSBC, had not been responsible for taking the money, but Lloyds Bank, that load of gamblers recently taken into state control, who, I was informed, were acting as ‘agents’ for the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group. However, nowhere in the statement are Lloyds Bank mentioned, nor what service they have performed for the £6 they have stolen.
So, watch out for these thieving bastards and do not send money via your bank unless it is within the UK. Banks making overseas transfers will grossly overcharge you, worse still they have friends on the way who will steal even more of your money for no good reason.
If our customer had put a 50 dollar note in an envelope and sent it to us by ordinary post we would both have been much better off.
Royal Mail – the story of a funny business
We run a mail-order business, so we have a great deal of admiration, especially at the local level, for Royal Mail. One example: this week two parcels were sent to us, second class, from London on friday. They arrived the following morning, which means that the whole service is pretty good nationally. Generally, Royal Mail has brightened up and tightened up over the last few years. We are Royal Mail fans.
Our day-to-day contact with Royal Mail is our local postman. We live out in the sticks and we get post daily, so we get to know our local post people pretty well. Postman Pat doesn’t deliver roun’ by yer, but Postmen Eifion and Emyr do. Both are fine fellows; indeed, Eifion was our across-the-road neighbour for about ten years, so we know him fairly well, and the rest of his family.
That’s the good bit. The really good bit is that they have not lost one of our parcels in the last three years, and none in the UK for the last ten. However, top marks if you have sensed that there’s something a tad bad coming up. Our friends and fellow dealers, Format in Birmingham, wanted some copies of The Token Book in something of a hurry. A package was duly sent. It cost £12.61 to post it. On the tuesday following a note was pushed under their door, saying that an attempt had been made to deliver it. The time of attempted delivery, said the note, was 09.05. However, Gary, who had been in the office since 08.50 was not aware of any such attempt. He rang the delivery office at the number on the note and arranged for delivery. However, it never did turn up at the appointed time. When Gary rang them, they said that the parcel could no longer be found, it had vanished !
Accordingly, a fortnight or so later, we made a claim for a lost parcel, asking for something to compensate for the £480 worth of books of ours that they had lost. About a week later the package was returned to us, labelled ‘not called for’.
A few days after that, we received a circular letter from someone called a Customer Service Advisor.
The letter states: “As you have provided only the minimum amount of evidence required to support your claim, compensation in this instance and for the service you have used is limited to 6 first class stamps or a postage refund, whichever is the greater.
In future, if you wish to claim compensation for the value of your item, you must provide additional evidence to support your claim such as proof of the items cost price.”
It continued “I hope that you are satisfied that the action I have taken concludes the matter...”
Now, we had sent them a stamped and dated certificate of posting – we always get one for our accounts, and a copy of the invoice to Format. What other evidence could they want ?
As to why the parcel was not delivered, the clue is in the address, which contains the information “2nd Floor”. The gent on deliveries that day was too idle to take a parcel to the second floor. As to why it was then ‘lost’ there are other possible explanations, but let us be charitable and ignore those.
Anyhow, we have made a formal complaint, so we shall see what happens.
Yesterday I got an (unconnected) e-mail from Sophie at Parcel Force, which read :
Dear Mr Withers
Delivering the perfect finish every time.
When businesses have important deadlines to meet, it’s really important that your express delivery partner has an understanding of the print industry.
We’ll be writing to you in the next few days, to see how your business could benefit from our expertise, exceptional quality and all round service levels. More and more printers, including St Ives Group, are choosing Parcelforce Worldwide to safeguard their deliveries and their reputation.
Click here to find out how we’re built for your business (flash movie) and learn how you could win premium class flights to the Big Apple and a stay at the Waldorf Astoria.
I wonder if it was the same Sophie? If I were to win the prize, would I want to go to the Big Apple? Not if Parcelforce were going to take a month to get me there and back, I think, which is what it took them to transport our parcel to Birmingham and back.
Funnies !
The funniest stories, like that above, are the real ones, not made up jokes, but the things that one finds in real life. In days of yore we used to have bon mots, lines of limericks and the like on page bottoms, along with one-liner jokes and quotes, not to mention wazzock stories. Alas, due to the way that our website pages are generated we cannot have limericks running along consecutive page bottoms. Sad that, as I used to have fun composing some of them.
Paul Withers
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