Not much to pack this morning but the owner’s promotional efforts yesterday produced a couple more sales. Two extra sales on a day that only produced four sales is 50%, so it was worth doing. We actually had three sales in the afternoon, so the day didn’t finish too badly. In terms of footfall, which is why we have a shop instead of working from an industrial unit, we had four people who came to sell, two who came to buy and two who came to irritate us.

On the phone we had several useful calls and one from a man when we had three people in the shop (and only two serving). He had a 1995 £2 coin, which, he said, is made of solid gold. That was one of the single-metal £2 coins we used to have. They weren’t really made for circulation so people aren’t familiar with the, They commemorate things like the Bill of Rights (1689) (or Claim of Right (1689) for those of you in Scotland, the Commonwealth games and the end of WW2.

It was this WW2 commemorative coin that the enquirer had. He knew it was gold because it was yellow, shiny and, when he scratched it , it was still yellow and shiny in the scratch. Unfortunately, as my colleague explained, these things are true of the base metal variety, which is made of nickel-brass and is therefore yellow and shiny all the way through. The caller wouldn’t take his advice and my colleague, being a nice man, kept answering questions even though we had more pressing matters in hand. The gold version should have a box and paperwork with it. The Royal Mint is currently out of stock but values a gold one at £1,180.

So to sum up – the ordinary nickel-brass one is valued at a maximum of £10 by Numista, the collecting site. There were over 6,000,000 minted. The gold one came in a box, with papers, there were just £1,000 minted and, as a rule, you are unlikely to be given one by someone you know in the pub.

However, he wouldn’t be told and insisted that his was gold (because it looks just like the gold one on the internet), before asking how to test it and whether we would test it, and, as we wouldn’t, who would test it. I don’t mind people asking for advice, because we are specialists and we are happy to share what we know, and it’s nice when people go away happy and better informed. It’s also good when people just go away. Hanging on the phone arguing and citing the idiotnet as their source, that’s not so good.

Eventually my colleague told him to try the gold-buying stall in the market. They always send their idiots to us, so it seemed only fair to repay the compliment.

Other stuff did happen, but this is a ten minute slice of the day that sticks in my mind.