After my last post was pure text I suppose you c ould describes this one as compensating for the photographic deficit!
INTRODUCTION
As well as items that feature in James and Sons July Auction I have some pictures taken in my own time to share.
AUCTION LOTS
The images here are some of those I have produced since Thursday…
Now for some…
NON-AUCTION PICS
SNAILS
These snails were brought out by early monring rain yesterday.
Moving on to a rather more garecful creature beginning with s…
SWALLOW
These three pictures all come from the same original shot, edited differently. Swallows like flying low over the Nar outfall, although they still fly very fast, hence this being my first successful shot of one.
A MIXED BAG TO FINISH
The first of five pictures from the Five Greatest Warriors (Matthew Reilly) to appear here – this is Genghis Khan’s shield, depiciting the six temple shrines wherein a pillar has to be placed – by the time West gains possession of this item two of the pillars have been successfully placed.Descriptions of all six vertices in the Word of Thoth, a language comprehensible only to the Siwan oracles
The first of two decorative plates in the window of the Salvation Army shop.
An account of today’s imaging, largely told by way of pictures.
INTRODUCTION
James and Sons’ July auction is progressing rapidly. A wide variety of items came my way for imaging.
A BIT OF EVERYTHING
Here are some of the highlights from today’s imaging…
Aftewr today there are only a couple of coin lots l;eft top be filled in this auction. This by the way is lot 1.
A very old coin indeed (cannot make out a date but it is either 12th or 13th century)
Not quite so old – dates from Elizabeth I
A parvenu – a sprightly 127 years old
Two suitcases full of masonic regalia.
A complete domino setThe red train is damaged, the black not so – the canopy over the cab is supposed to be removable since……the driver and fireman cannot be seen when it is on.
Some of the highlights from the early lots in the July auction, and a few good links.
INTRODUCTION
Although the links I shall be sharing have nothing in common with the main part of this post, which is about the start of imaging for James and Sons July auction, there are not enough of them to justify a post all to themselves, so I am tacking them on.
THURSDAY: COINS
On Thursday the imaging I was doing was all of coin lots…
Lot 60, the lowest numbered lot that I imaged on Thursday (I scanned these lots at high resolution, a number of lots at a time – scan each face, and bolt together to make the main image……while keeping the individual images to enable viewers to see them in closer focus.
These ‘cartwheel pennies’ were produced only in 1797, because it was discovered that the amount of copper in them was worth more than the face value of the coin. They were therefore removed from circulation, which had the effect of causing a coin shortage.
FRIDAY
Yesterday’s imaging was more varied, featuring a few more coin lots, toys and some militaria…
This is lot 151, and will start the militaria section – the four sets of medals that I arrnaged around the commemorative plaque were awarded to four brothers who served together.The first of five close-ups of parts of the whole.
LINKS
First of all, a link to an excellent in=depth piece about the murder of Jo Cox, written by kittysjones.
An annoucnement that the catalogue for our June 29th auction is now ready for viewing. Please share widely.
INTRODUCTION
The catalogue for James and Sons’ auction on June 29th is now ready – it is back from the printers, and today was devoted to plugging the last gaps image-wise in the online version, which can be viewed by clicking here.
FILLING THE GAPS
Most of the gaps were due to images not being uploaded, but once these had been attended to, some items remained to be imaged, the bulk of them coins. Here to clear the decks are the non-coin items that I had to image today…
This was to field a request for extra detail rather than an image that had not been done.
Lot 460
The two supplementary images I produced for lot 460 were in response to a query.
Lot 627
Lot 742
The coins that needed doing were a run of 19 lots, all bar one of which could be scanned (396-414 incl), and one extra lot (416)…
Each of these coin lots has three images minimum (a composite and two individuals)
This one has an extra image – a close up of the date.
A distinctive (I hope) way to mark the occasion of my 41st birthday.
INTRODUCTION
Today is my birthday, which is the last part of the title explained, so where does the word “Eulerian” come in?
THE MOST PROLIFIC OF ALL MATHEMATICIANS
For all his immense output Leonhard Euler (pronouned “Oiler”, not “Ewe-ler”) is best known to the world at large for his solution to the “Bridges of Konigsberg” conundrum. Citizens of this then German town (it is now Kaliningrad, Russia) used to amuse themselves by trying to walk around the town crossing each of its seven bridges once and once only in the course of their peregrinations. Nobody ever managed it, and Euler (pioneering the science of topology, a minor offshoot of which is the “Beck Map”, versions of which are now used worldwide as an easy way to display urban public transport routes, in the process) proved that there was no way to do this. This is because each the four landmasses involved contained an odd number of bridgeheads – had specifically two (and it could have been any two), or all four of these landmasses contained even numbers of bridgeheads it would have been possible to devise a walking route using each bridge precisely once.
Much less well known than the above, Euler also noticed that if you feed values into the equation Y = X2 + X + 41 every value of X from 0 through to 39 produces a prime number for Y, and even after the inevitable break to the sequence where X = 40 produces Y = 1681 = 41 * 41, and X = 41 produces Y = 1763 = 41 * 43, the formula continues to produce a very large number of prime numbers – far more than any other formula of similar type. This then is why I described this an Eulerian birthday – it is my 41st. A clue to bear in mind for next year’s birthday is that the person who will play the role in my blog post on that day that Euler has played today was proud of the fact that he was born in Cambridge in 1953 and had initials DNA. More details, including a full listing of the primes produced before X = 40, can be found in Keith Devlin’s “Mathematics: A New Golden Age”.
PICTURES
I have some pictures, mainly from today at work. These are presented as a ’tiled mosaic’ – click an individual image to view at full size.
From here to the Watt medallion are tokens that I scanned at high resolution and worked on to produce the clearest possible images.
These last few pics are not work pics – they are the best images I have managed to get of the James Watt medallion I bought recently.
AFTERWORD
Many people on both facebook and twitter have wished my a happy birthday and I thank all of you for so doing – the main celebration, a Sunday lunch at the Crown in East Rudham two days before the actual day was superb.
An account of today at work, featuring the creation of a poster, a laminated copy of which is on display in our shop window at 5 Norwich Street, Fakenham, NR21 9AF
INTRODUCTION
Today as well as producing the poster which forms the first part of the title I did some more postal history imaging and imaged a couple of lots for a small militaria sale in which i have otherwise had no involvement. Also, I assembled a metal detector for display in the shop.
ASSEMBLING THE POSTER
The purpose of this poster was to advertise the hats and helmets I blogged about yesterday. This required selecting the images which would work best, getting brief descriptions of the items chosen to feature and fitting the whole together in a visually appealing way. The three images I selected were:
I went for the white helmet to provide a contrast withe dark colour of the other two. Putting these together with the descriptions and appropriate top and tail pieces gave this final product:
POLICE HEADGEAR AT JAMES – this is a link to the original word document – a screenshot is below…
An account of voting in the Norfolk Police and Crime Commissioner election and of my day at work.
INTRODUCTION
I have had a busy day imaging auction items at James and Sons, but before going to work I did find time to…
VOTE
The only election in which us Norfolk folk had a vote today was for Police and Crime Commissioner, and to put it mildly I was not 100% convinced that this was an election worth voting in. However, in my inbox this morning was an email from the Grteen Party candidate, and that settled the issue – I would vote. The polling station was not a hive of activity (indeed to judge from the reaction to my arrival I may well have been the first voter the folks running that polling station had seen that day). This election used a preference system – one vote for your favourite candidate and one for your second favourite. With three of the candidates being respectively Tory, UKIP and a highly suspect Independent, and a fourth standing for what is effectively an ex-party, I used my votes for the Green party candidate (1st) and Labour (2nd):
IMAGING
Today’s imaging consisted of two distinct parts, first a collection of police helmets and such, and second starting work on some postal history items. I will start with the…
POLICE HEADGEAR
These feature a wide range of police organisations.
POSTAL HISTORY
Most of the postal history stuff was not so interesting in appearance, although there were a few hihglights…
This cruciform pattern was the most distinctive of all the postmarks I saw today.
With so much of interest lot 371 merited a five image gallery
An account of James and Sons April auction, a plug for a petition to honour the Hillsborough campaigners and some photographs.
INTRODUCTION
The day before yesterday, at the Maids Head Hotel in Norwich, James and Sons had their April auction. Overall, the auction was a great success. Although the number of internet bidders did not equal that for the March auction, there were 180 internet bidders, and this was a one day sale whereas March had been a two day affair. I will also be sharing some other stuff, including photos, at the end of this piece.
GETTING THERE
My travel expenses have recently gone down, due to the introduction of an all-day ticket which covers travel on any Norfolk route save the Coast Hopper and costs £5.50. This did mean that I could not get to a Norwich auction as early as if I were to use the X1 route (run by a different bus company, therefore ipso facto not covered) but it was still a seriously early start, as I had to be on the first bus of the morning, at 6:10AM to arrive early enough to do everything that I had to do for the running of the auction. The run to Norwich was thankfully, save for the inevitable bottleneck near Hellesdon Hospital, a very clear one, and the bus arrived exactly on schedule.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE AUCTION
As I have indicated, this auction was a very successful one. The principal highlights according to my method of evaluating these things were in ascending lot number order:
Lot 78, a collection of British banknotes in a tin, valued at £30-40, sold for £65
Lot 87, a Lebanese 1 Livre note with a lilac overprint, valued at £25-30, sold for £45
Lot 232, an R101 Royal Airship Works cloth cap badge, estimated at £75-85 and sold for an eye-popping £170.
Lot 263, an Imperial German WI Zeppelin commemorative badge, estimated at £55-60, sold for £120
Lot 268, a British WWII Commandos Middle East cap badge (brass), estimated at £20-25, sold for £48
Lot 270, a WWI aerial flechette dart as dropped on enemy soldiers, estimated at £15-20, sold for £42
Lot 680, a postcard of the 1906 New Zealand rugby team, estimated at £10-20, sold for £45
Lot 714, a Victorian scrapbook assembled by Harriett Riches of Trunch, estimated at £40-50, sold for £90
Lot 715, a Victorian/ Edwardian scrapbook, estimated at £30-40, sold for £90 to the the same person who bought lot 714.
Here is a ’tiled mosaic’ of images of these lots – to see an image at full size click on it:
Lot 78
Lot 232
Lot 263
Lot 268
Lot 270
Lot 680
The main image of 714
714-a
714-b
714-c
715
PHOTOGRAPHER SNAPS UP THREE BARGAIN BASEMENT BUYS
I had contrived to arrange my breaks from computer work to coincide with periods when lots of interest to me were going under the hammer. The first such lot was number 460:
Don’s mugshot on one half of the stamps, him playing the pull shot (his trademark, and a shot about which he wrote a short piece which features in many a cricket anthology).
This was knocked down to me for £7, and better was to come near the end of the auction…
Lot 711 was a 1904 Erie Railway pass, for which a single bid of £8 sufficed:
The front of the pass.The back of the pass.Both sides of the pass.
Construction started on this railroad in 1835, and the first run along the full length of the route, from Piermont, New York to Dunkirk, New York took place in 1851. More information about this railroad can be found here. Below is a route map:
Lot 717, a print of old London Bridge based on the earliest known drawing of that structure, which is in the Pepys collection, attracted no interest from anyone save me, and was knocked down for £5:
A CALL TO HONOUR THE
HILLSBOROUGH CAMPAIGNERS
27 years ago 96 people lost their lives at Hillsborough football ground. Through most of this period people seeking justice for the dead faced a media and governments that were almost uniformly hostile to them, while the police force involved consistently refused to accept responsibility for the disaster. At long last, after a full inquiry and inquest into the deaths it has been established that these 96 people were unlawfully killed and that blame for their deaths lies squarely with the police. Just this morning I found out about a petition on38 Degrees to honour the campaigners who have fought so hard for this outcome. They are far more worthy of being honoured than many who have already been honoured (As a resident of King’s Lynn I think of Sir Henry Bellingham MP, apparently knighted for the great feat of having attended the same school as the prime minister, albeit at a different time). If you share my view…
Does this look like the start of a public footpath to you? It is, and you are looking at one reason why the developer who perpetrated this (with whose name I shall not sully this blog) are personae non grata in King’s Lynn
My contribution to this document was to scan the postcard that appears on the front cover.This is the only example of this particular £2 coin that I have thus far seen. I approve of commemorating Darwin, but not necessarily of the chosen picture (a Galapagos tortoise, or finch, or a map of the Galapagos islands would have been my choice).
An account of today at James and Sons, featuring the construction of a press release, a bonus explanation of the origin of the phrase ‘bent as a nine-bob note’, and at the end a couple of important links.
INTRODUCTION
I have some old images to share, some new images to share, and a press release to talk about. Additionally I have a couple of important links that I will be sharing at the end of this post.
THE CREATION OF A PRESS RELEASE
There are several stages involved in creating press releases/ bulk emails. Stage 1 is working out what to cover, which in this case involved two aspects:
The success of the March 30th and 31st auction, with large numbers of internet bidders, and…
Each of the foregoing for maximum effect needed to be accompanied by an appropriate image. Hence:
IMAGE SELECTION
For the March image I was looking for something that had sold for well above estimate, and would look good in an email. Thus my attention focussed on lot 720, which I recalled as being both interesting visually and spectacularly successful in the auction room. Thus I needed to view the full image gallery and select from within that…
This full image is too busy for use in an email
This image showing the coins and ingot in their natural alignment looked good
I could have used this but decided against it
The obverses on their own are not very interesting – it is the reverses that are distinctive
It was close a call for this one.
The ingot on it’s own could not be used, but there were possibilities involving it…
I decided, given the shape of image I was looking for to combine the shot of the four coins and the ingot and the close-up of the ingot into a composite image (I considered the four reverses on their own, but wanted both parts of the image to have the same colour background).
The composite I created for the occasion.
For the image to accompany the text advertising the April auction the task was easier – I went for the front cover item for very obvious reasons.
Incidentally the above denomination of banknote provides the origin for the phrase “bent as a nine-bob note” – ‘bob’ was a colloquialism for a shilling, and as shown above, a ‘ten-bob’ note was kosher while a ‘nine-bob note’ would absolutely not have been.
ASSEMBLING A MAILING LIST
Coming up with the text for the press release is a straight-forward task, and assembling a mailing list is a simple matter of noting which categories of items are prominent in the upcoming auction, selecting the appropriate lists from the database and combining them into one big list. In this instance there were almost 400 names on the final list. As a security measure (and a guard against people hitting the ‘reply to all’ button) I am the designated recipient of the emails (my James and Sons email address, not my personal one) and the true recipients are bcc’d. Thus, given that our system can handle approximately 100 people being bcc’d at a time, this one involved sending the email four times.
THE FINAL PRESS RELEASE
I have a jpg of the final press release, and also a link that will enable you to view the document in its original word format.
In addition to the above, some work on the database and some fetching and carrying there were also a few items that had been catalogued but had not previously been in our possession so still needed imaging…
This ‘claymore’ type sword is an absolute monster – stood vertically it reaches my shoulder!
Finally, to end this post on an upbeat note, a story from the New Statesmanby way of Prides Purgeabout how badly the Tory campaign for London Mayor has come off the rails(attentive followers of this blog and my London transport themed website, www.londontu.be, will know that if I had a vote in that election I would be using it on Sian Berry’s behalf, but whoever ends up benefitting – most likely Sadiq Khan – bad news for Tories is good news for me!)
A brief account of today at work and a plug for the Green Party manifesto in the upcoming London mayoral elections.
INTRODUCTION
As well as details from today at work I have something else to share which will be revealed later.
THE APRIL AUCTION
Last week James and Sons had its March auction, which attracted unprecedented interest among online bidders, with almost 300 registering to bid. The April auction catalogue is available in print and can now be viewed online by clicking here. Today featured an big effort to get the imaging done, with the result that most lots now have their accompanying image or images. Some of the highlights from today’s imaging now follow…
GREEN MANIFESTO FOR LONDON MAYOR ELECTION LAUNCHED
The Green Party manifesto for the London Mayoral elections in 30 days time is now out, and very impressive it is too. Here are some links for you to follow up:
aspiblog 