Help With British Pennies

BU red coins will carry a much bigger premium and you should aim for them IMO. Whilst you're starting out its important to be careful when buying because some beginners can find it hard to distinguish between lustre and cleaned.

I would recommend getting a couple old brown pennies of little to no value and giving them three different treatments. Soak one in vinegar, scrub one with soap and a wire brush and polish the third on with brasso or a similar product. The result will be three coins that are 'red' but not lustrous and not desirable to any collector. These are probably the three most common types of cleaning to give a 'red' look.

Once you've done this compare them to a fully red lustrous coin you have purchased. It may not even be an early penny, ones from around the 1960's can be had very cheap and display the same characteristics. You will notice a huge difference between lustre and cleaned red.

I wish someone told me when I first started collecting because I got burnt twice in my early days

From that photo I can't really tell...but just thought I would point out one thing about black around letters etc.

Some English silver (particularly between 1920-1947) contained manganese in the alloy... this causes it to go very black if heavily circulated. I realise that is why some coins almost look like cameo's with the higher area's silver and the field of the coin black.

Its something that can sometimes be very attractive but I cant help thinking that if stored just after the process has started you could find black around the letters in an uncleaned coin...(speculation on my part maybe)

I have done, by incident. With modern copper pennies, pre 1992. I got a batch of 10 NEW PENNY 1971 issue 1ps and polished them till they went back to original luster. Used brasso, so they were silver for a while. I then put them back into the box in which I store my pennies (I have about 1500 of them) and they get shuffled everyonce in a while. Today, after roughly 1 year and a half, I sorted them (im about to do a post on that) and I found some of those pennies. I retrieved about 6 of them that still looked like there was foul play. A couple looked brushed, with uneven patina. Several appeared newish but had specs like th OP BU coin. One, inexplicably, was shiny and basically as new, Uncirculated condition still. I reckon it wasnt part of the group and has either entered circulation from a mint proof pack or has been forged (god knows why).

Basically, either way, whichever looks nicest is which one you should buy.

Because when they are struck that is what they look like. They are closer to mint state and far more attractive than most toned examples.

We collect for enjoyment mainly dont we? Id rather enjoy a red example even if it lost value as it toned over the years.

Agree and a nicely lustred coin is much more desirable to most collectors.

However the penny showing lustre is not BU, there is some obvious wear on the necklace of Victoria. To me the darker coin looks slightly better in terms of grade.

The point I am trying to make is that as collectors we have to be careful not to consider coins retaining much of the original lustre just as BU by default, as lustre and grade are two different things.