On leaving school in the mid-seventies Tom joined a West Country firm of Chartered Surveyors and Auctioneers, here he gained the skills required to run a successful auction room. The excitement and pleasure of cataloguing and auctioning the contents of houses (that had often been formed in pre-war days) was a valuable experience and led onto working freelance for other auction houses.

A childhood love of history and coins has continued through the decades and these experiences have given him a specialist knowledge on all things coins and related items. ‘It can be just one coin out of hundreds, that can be rare and valuable, it’s just a question of identification’. Tom’s discovery and identification of an early American New England Shilling selling for £197,000 is evidence of this.