Vending machines are everywhere. At train stations, airports, hotel lobbies and shopping centres. They spit out for cash all sorts of goodies such as bottled water, soft drink, and chocolate bars. The sort of essential items you might just have an urge for RIGHT NOW -these machines are there to entice you. Other vending machines offer essential items such as toiletries or bus tickets. The convenience makes life easy! More recently vending machines help you with other items such as a quick mobile device battery top-up and anyone for fishing bait?

The latest in what seems to be a vending machine craze is gold ingots. So you're out shopping in the Westfield shopping centre in West London and you have an urge to buy gold then your desires can be fulfilled quickly and easily at the "Gold to Go" vending machine. First officially unveiled in Abu Dhabi in 2010 a machine has now popped up in England. For £40 you can pick up a 1g gold coin or £10,250 buys you a 250g gold bar. The interest in gold at it's heights at the moment you can also buy a 2.5g gold ingot engraved with London's landmarks for £100 -did I mention it's my birthday coming up?

The computer updates the gold pricing every 10 minutes in line with the current trading price and it hopes to entice investors as gold is considered a solid investment choice. Convenience does however come at a price with the "Gold to Go" machines pricing at a premium over the spot price for gold. There has also been reports of malfunctions where customers have not received the correct sized coin or ingot that they were charged for. In an anti-money laundering move the machine asks for a passport scan for purchases over £2,500.

In their continuing effort to assist collectors and combat the rise of counterfeit coins PCGS is making some adjustments to their submission system effective August 1st 2011.

Secure Plus is a service offered by the Professional Coin Grading Service which includes high tech security features and tougher scrutiny of each coin graded. This service will now become available to economy level submissions and they will now allow "genuine" coins into a secure plus slab. A secure plus submitted coin means it will undergo more vigorous testing by the PCGS graders. It will be photographed and that photo made available on the certificate verification page of the PCGS website. You can see the PCGS image of this 1917m sixpence MS64 matches that of the coin in hand here in this example. Each coin is laser scanned, sniffed (to detect the presence of chemicals or enhancement materials on the coin) and undergoes a metal composition analysis. These measures have been implemented to help PCGS identify if a coin has been slabbed by them before, altered and returned to them for regrading or is a counterfeit example. The photographs available will help collectors see for themselves if they are offered a counterfeit coin or a counterfeit PCGS slabs -an immeasurable boost in consumer confidence. With these measures it is now much more likely that your coin might be recovered if it were stolen. Another change is that because of the problem with Chinese counterfeit coins, PCGS will only accept coins from this country on the Secure Plus service level.

Let's not forget the important grading factor about Secure Plus graded coins is that they undergo more consistent grading and may be awarded a + grade ie. MS65+ giving that coin a potentially much higher value and position in the population report.

The Perth Mint have recently published a list of mintages for their coin issues. It focuses mainly on precious metal legal tender issues of gold and silver coins and includes some (not all) uncirculated issues from 1986 onwards. A handy reference for those who want to check up on actual sales figures and compare those with mintage numbers.

The Perth Mint Numismatic Mintages

I hope you're finding these articles about strong prices realised for coins interesting! It will certainly make for interesting historical reading in a few years time to see how the market has moved as PCGS graded coins become more common and more liquid on the Australian coin collecting market. Two days ago one of the pioneers (and champions) of PCGS graded coins in Australia managed to sell a PCGS MS67 1963 Shilling for the remarkable price of $360.

The reason I say this price is remarkable is that the 1963 shilling is not particularly rare in any condition. The PCGS population shows a total of 14 coins in MS67 and 65 in MS66. Despite these large numbers and a mintage of more than 10 million coins this MS67 example still managed 8 times catalogue value. This compares more than favourably with the PCGS MS67 1958 Shilling which sold recently for 7 times catalogue value despite being a much more scarce coin.

This probably indicates a couple of things. First, collectors are willing to pay for quality. Second, it only takes two determined bidders to drive the price of a coin to heady heights. Examination of the bidding history of this coin suggests that this is exactly what happened.

As we posted just recently about the remarkable price that a PCGS MS62 1943S sixpence achieved we thought it worthwhile mentioning the surprising price that another coin realised just recently. This coin, a PCGS MS66 1958 shilling is just one of three coins at that grade and was bought for the eye watering price of $610 on the Australian Ebay. This is slightly more than 7 times the current catalogue value in Gem.

The 1958 shilling, which has mintage of over 8 million coins is by no means scarce, but suffers from what is known as 'condition rarity'. Basically this means that while 1958 shillings are common, 1958 shillings in high grades are not. A quick look at the PCGS population report supports this, with just 18 of the type graded in mint state, compared with 94 coins for the 1959 shilling. The 1959 shilling has a mintage of just two million coins more than the 1958 shilling.

So here's another coin to look out for. 1958 shillings in gem grades are not common and the astute collector would do well to look out for raw coins which could then be graded by PCGS. The growing market acceptance of PCGS graded coins in Australia could then allow for significant profits to be realised if the coins were then sold.

Another special ballot issue on offer from the Royal Australian Mint is the tiny 1/10 ounce gold ten dollar coin depicting the mintmark design for 2011 George Kruger Gray's Shilling Ram. At just 17.53mm this gold proof coin is limited to 2,500 issued. With the expectation of high collector interest the Mint has only made these coins available to collectors via a ballot system similar to what has been used for the $25 kangaroo at sunset coins.

The ballot form will arrive with the March Mint Issue and must be returned to the Mint by March 31st with the draw to take place on April 3rd. Entrants to the ballot must be on the Mint's mailing list and enter with an original ballot form with only one entry valid per customer.

If your ballot is successful you will have the chance to purchase one of these proof gold coins for $265. To bring that back into perspective for coin collectors vs. gold bullion collectors that equates to $138.42 in gold (correct at 27/2/2011).

2009 Frilled Neck Lizard One Dollar

As part of the Land series of pad-printed colour designs the 2009 Frilled Neck Lizard as shown above was issued by the Royal Australian Mint in a colourful card. These standard sized one dollar coins were issued as NCLT collector coins. The Frilled Neck Lizard is more commonly seen on the now obsolete 2c piece designed by Stuart Devlin, but this design is depicted by Royal Australian Mint designer Sabina Foster.

The 2008-9 land series included the Bilby with a mintage of 17,950, Koala 28,445, Wombat 23,995, Rock Wallaby 25,163 and the Echidna 21,889. It followed the successful Ocean Series of 2006-7 and was supposed to be followed by an Air series of which we are yet to see.

The lowest mintage in this Land Series appears at this time to be the Frilled Neck Lizard with an astonishingly low mintage of just 2,690 coins. Now the RAM shop/website is sold out of this item so it appears that there will be no more of this coin minted. Now that doesn't always mean they won't produce any more, but considering we are now in 2011 it seems unlikely. We think this coin may be the next decimal NCLT to rise in value as collectors build sets and there is a shortage of this particular design. Maybe a chance here to stock up on a low mintage coin and take a punt on a price rise later.

Commemorating the Brisbane Commonwealth Games in 1982 a gold $200 coin was struck by the Royal Australian Mint. The XII Commonwealth Games logo can be seen on the commemorative 50c coin released into circulation. The $200 gold issue features this logo and an athlete on the reverse with "XII Commonwealth Games Brisbane 200 Dollars" in the legends. The obverse features the Arnold Machin portrait of Queen Elizabeth II.

A series of gold $200 coins were released with the Koala reverse and yearly issues commemorating special occasions and events such as Charles and Diana's Wedding, the First Fleet and Australian native fauna.

This Commonwealth Games issue was struck in uncirculated and proof finish and is Australian legal tender for two hundred dollars. They are 24mm in diameter and have full edge reeding. Each weigh 10 grams of 91.67% gold and 8.33% copper which is 22 carat equating to 0.2948 ounces of gold. The value of this coin is reflected in the trade of gold bullion, so if you have one of these coins check out the Australian Gold Coin Calculator to find out what it is worth today.

There were 77,206 uncirculated coins released at $210 and 30,032 proof coins released at $350. These issues continue to trend with gold bullion pricing.

If you are looking to pick one of these up I'd recommend paying the premium for the proof coin. Apart from the obvious higher quality coin, the proofs were issued in a capsule in a box in an outer cardboard box with a certificate of authenticity. The uncirculated versions were simply slid into a soft pvc sleeve which could lead to pvc damage, fingerprints and environmental problems. The pvc tends not to damage the coin surface because of the gold composition but over time will leave an icky sticky residue on the coin.

A recent thread on an internet forum brought about some wise comments from one of our blog writers. He's been a bit quiet lately with blog input but his words are too good not to write up here for the benefit of others.

The thread poster, as a newbie to collecting, asked what the merits were for collecting decimal NCLT and whether it was a viable investment option for the future. Or does all the investing opportunities lie in pre-decimals? The answer posted up here sums up good collecting advice IMO.

I hate to say this, but collecting modern mint issue coins as an investment is likely to be a very poor investment indeed. Some issues do very well but the vast majority do not, witness that mint and proof sets are usually available the next year on ebay for under issue price. Picking which issues will appreciate in value is almost impossible, other than some yearly issues (like the Roo at Sunset $25 gold) which seem to do well each year.

I'd advise that you collect what you like, and if you decide this includes NCLT then all well and good. If you don't like the NCLT or perhaps your budget doesn't stretch that far then don't collect them. I don't collect current RAM issued stuff myself but I do have a number of the new Ashes 20c because I like the design very much.

Learn to grade, whether it be George V, George VI, or QE2, this the most valuable skill you can have. Once you can do that you'll get to know the striking characteristics of certain years, scarcity of high grade coins of year and type, and you'll have a much better chance of seeing some return on your investment. It doesn't have to be expensive either, you'll find that even in the QE2 series that true gems in some years are very hard to find. I've been trying to put together a gem QE2 florin and penny set for the last 4 years and still have a couple of coins from each series to find. And those are proving very difficult.

I should point out that I wouldn't even recommend trying to collect pre decimals for investment reasons until you have a LOT of experience. You will make mistakes and it's better to make cheap mistakes as you learn than to dive in head first straight away and make expensive mistakes that will likely drive you away from the hobby. Collect something you love, and you'll get to know what you love and the opportunity for financial gain will follow in time.

If you've spent any time at all on one of the many internet coin forums then you'll almost certainly have seen the question 'I am a new coin collector, where should I start?'. There's dozens of tips that people give those new to the hobby, and you're probably well aware of most of them. So, just to change things up a little we thought we'd list off some things that the new coin coin collector shouldn't do when they are just entering the hobby. We'd love to say that we didn't do any of the things we're about to talk about but to be honest, we did most of them, and it's from this basis of hard experience that we speak.

1) Not spending the time learning to grade. Grading is without doubt the single most important skill a coin collector can possess.

2) Buying coins before the books or not spending sufficient time learning the hobby before handing over your money.

3) Diving in an buying a lot of low grade coins without any understanding of grading or what collecting theme the new collector is following.

4) Buying coins off of the internet or from dealers and blindly trusting the seller's grading.

5) Knowingly buying problem coins without realising the ongoing problems these will cause your collection.

6) Unknowingly buying problem coins.

7) Expecting to make money from the hobby immediately, lots of new collectors think it is a money making game rather than a hobby.

8) Improperly storing or handling a new collection. This can wipe much of the value of your collection off in just a few minutes.

9) Spending up big on mint issued NCLT and expecting it to increase in value in the short term. If you enjoy it, collect it, but making making money from NCLT is a tricky business.

All of the above points can impair the profits you'll make from collecting or put a dampener on your thrills in collecting. We get a lot of questions from novice or beginner collectors and even those who have simply found an interesting coin and want to know more about it. If we can set just one person on the right path or give them the tools to make the right choices then we've done a good deed in numismatics today :)