mint_mark

What an amazing selection! I can see loads of countries in there... and some older coins too. It reminds me of a tin of coins a friend gave me to sell for him (much smaller, around 300 coins). I sold it in small lots on ebay over a few months and got over £100 for him in the end... he was pleased. I got to keep the ones I wanted for the price I wanted I'm sure Chris will have a feel for how much such pile might fetch from a dealer... I expect it would basically involve weighing it. As for posting it anywhere... a small fortune!

In my opinion the auction pictures are modified versions of the Chard pictures... I compared the compression artefacts around the edge of the coin and they seem to be the same. So even if the same coin is being sold, there is no excuse for using someone else's picture (unless permission is given). In general though I don't think there is any relationship between owning a coin and owning the copyright on images of the coin. If I buy a coin, photograph it and then sell it the pictures are still mine. I don't think the new owner could stop me doing anything with the images.

It's tricky because there is not an up to date reference book on these tokens. The definitive books are all long out of print, so not only are the values out of date, the books themselves are very hard to come by and cost a fortune when they do turn up! Your best bet is to find a recent sale price for one somewhere... if you have an ebay account you can get it to search automatically and email you when one is auctioned, then you can see how much it goes for. Alternatively you can search dealer's websites... the one I look at for tokens doesn't have yours, but similar penny tokens seem to cost just under £20 in VF. Google might help a bit with this...

I hadn't seen any half sovereigns with mint marks at all in several years of looking until a few showed up on ebay recently. They just don't seem to turn up often. Victorian half sovereigns are generally scarce too. Basically, most half sovereigns can sell for more than bullion value unless they are really worn. Hmmm, I bet I'm the only one here interested in Norwegian change from the 70s

OK, I went to have a look... they all seem to be identified. For the German one, you need to look at the tiny mint mark letter either side of the eagle's tail (is it B, or D? Can't quite tell). And the Netherlands 1 cent is surely 1823 (not 1825).

It's in good condition for the type, usually much worse... I have an 1823 in VG

I like some of the colours that coins in different metals can go naturally, but I don't like unusual "novelty" toning. For copper, I have some German pfennigs that have gone a deep metallic red... don't know why. Others stay bright and coppery.

I definitely agree with that!! All too often the book says "large this" or "smaller that" and without seeing the other one how can you tell? Luckily with digital cameras that have good macro capability there are some great variety web sites out there.

Well, I can at least understand that... it's because grading is subjective and we are all learning all the time. I have coins that I was really pleased with at the time, but now I look at them and think "*sigh*... that has probably been cleaned" or even "that's probably a trace of mounting". It's just I wasn't experienced or objective enough at the time to recognise it. So now I either stick with the coin and live with my "mistake", or I upgrade and practically give the old coin away. I suppose the slabbing offers another (supposedly expert) opinion, which might reassure someone who doesn't want to feel duped.

But this isn't necessarily so is it? On the one hand, a stamp or countermark does disfigure the coin and obliterate part of the design, so many people view it as "damage". But on the other hand it might indicate an unusual use for the coin, perhaps allowing it to circulate somewhere else or for another value. The problem is that there are so many stamps and countermarks, ranging from advertisements, peoples' initials and idle carvings to official countermarks and re-denominations. Some are very collectable and others are only interesting to those who know what they mean. This one seems interesting because it has a date... but I have no idea what it means

I agree with this sentiment... and sound too. I sometimes take a few coins in my hand and imagine what it must have been like paying for things, or counting out change from a pocketful. What was the sound of half crowns being counted, that must have been common in shops and banks at one time?

That approach sounds much more sensible to me than rushing out an incomplete revision each year like some publishers do...

Interesting... I suppose it comes down to whether there is actually anything special about gold. The prices of things go up and down due to factors that influence the supply or demand, but when the price of gold goes up and down some gold advocates are convinced that it is because the unit of measurement (dollars usually, but any currency) is varying in value... they would say that the value of the gold, in terms of real wealth it can buy, is very stable. I wonder if that is true... this needs some more pondering <_<

But who can say? It has also risen over 60% in the last five years, so any statistics really depend on where you start the comparison. The famous $800 fogure was very much a spike and nowhere near a steady market value. Like anything, the value of gold depends on supply and demand... but some of that demand is from people seeking an alternative to other assets. Many people still view gold as a store of wealth and when people lose confidence in other things... currencies, shares, property, antiques... they turn to bullion. So, think about general confidence in existing investments then think about future confidence in those investments and then think about demand for gold.

The 99.99% is a measure of the purity of the gold. In carat terms, 100% is 24 carats and your coin is virtually all pure gold. British sovereigns are 22 carats (so (22/24) * 100 = 91.67%). Mints never used to be able to make coins from pure gold (too soft), but now they can. As for currency, these coins are primarily made as a convenient way to buy and sell gold bullion. The decorative designs make them attractive and appealing and I am sure there are (rich) people who collect them. Any face value that they bear is purely nominal... in practice they trade at a price that varies closely with the current gold price.

I thought some of you might be interested in this auction on ebay... A book about imitation Edward hammered coins

Is that the design with the individual digits arranged around the centre? I always find that hard to read!

I found a Canadian cent from the 1930s in my garden in Southampton. A soldier here to embark for D-day perhaps? Also two blue marbles with white swirly bits...

I like the two pound coins... a modern half crown perhaps

That's right... one problem was that steel had not been perfected and it was hard to make a cast iron boiler that didn't have small imperfections... you found out where the imperfections were as it exploded under pressure. As better steel making developed, high pressure steam engines became feasable and won out because of their high power output for a given sized engine. Another response to the exploding boilers problem was the Stirling engine (Stirling was another Scotsman). This uses trapped air at normal pressure and arranges for the air to be alternately heated and cooled. As it expands and contracts it moves a piston in and out. Sometimes called a heat engine or external combustion engine, they were used for pumping (where the water being pumped helps with cooling). They are relatively low power. Both steam engines and heat engines lost out when small electric motors came along, and to the internal combustion engine later. Does anyone know how today's coining presses are powered? I imagine they are electric.

What a lot of points in one post! With regard to postage stamps, I always understood that Britain never put the country name on them because they were invented here. Of course we can't claim that for coins... I suppose one could suggest that the country name was there on coins as Britt or Britannia, but not lately. I agree with all the points about denominations not being practical for hammered coins... it is hard to make them a uniform weight, they get clipped, and the intrinsic value changes according to market conditions. However, we should have been insulated from all those factors since 1816 when we relaxed the intrinsic value requirement, so from then on there is no reason why a shilling coin could not always be worth a shilling. Looking through a 19th century catalogue I can find a few undenomiated issues... but mostly commemorative. It would seem that by the time we started using explicit denominations (William IV), our European neighbours were already there... maybe we were catching up with them? Of course, revolutionary France was probably forced into abandoning any link to intrinsic value earlier than us, and the loose knit array of German states had such a wide variety of currencies that denominations must have been essential! I wonder why we always had values on Maundy coins though? Note that Conder tokens almost always had the value too... like everyone was expected to recognise a sixpence but had to be told that this token was a halfpenny. I do notice that many other countries indicate the weight and fineness of the metal on coins, which I think is something Britain has never done (on circulating coins). As for the empire, I'm pretty sure British coins were not automatically accepted everywhere... any coins in use would have to be accepted locally and would have to fit in with the local currencies. I know Canada, Australia and New Zealand used British coins until they had their own. Some parts of the empire were more British than others... for example South Africa seems to have been "coin compatible" with Britiain, but certainly not India or Hong Kong. What would an Indian merchant do with sixpence? In many places the intrinsic value system still held, so many coins were accepted on the basis of their metal content alone, leading to all the countermarking and "chop marks" in Asia and South America. I know Britain tried very hard to get trade dollars accepted in Asia, in competition with US dollars and others. There are lots of other coins without country names... plenty of German states rely on just a monogram or set of arms, Sweden with the crossed arrows and three crowns, Denmark and Netherlands with monograms again, etc. I think you are right here... they were just never intended to circulate beyond the borders. It was more important for the colonial issues... it is part of establishing presence and identity and gaining acceptance. If coins need any warning on them it should be "actual value may decline over time"

I'd go along with everything Sylvester said and just add alittle more... Some coins (silver three pence) just had the number. Crowns that actually circulated had no denomination, I suppose you had to recognise the sizes... hence the apparent confusion between crowns and double florins of the jubilee head coinage. Maybe also between florins and halfcrowns? Obverses only of course... The denominated crowns were basically commemorative and I can imagine that many people weren't familiar with them, but as Sylvester says, it also fits in with the designs of the times. Good job they didn't put a denomination on sovereigns too Finally, in modern times "crown" seems to be associated with the size rather than the denomination... so the royal mint describe their large commemorative coins as crowns, even though the denomination is five pounds. As for places like Gibraltar and the Isle of Man... you get "crowns" in all sorts of metals, it really just refers to the size there. Finally again, many countries had crown sized silver coins and collecting these is very popular... crowns, thalers, dollars, 8 reales and similar from most European countries in the 19th century.

So maybe it would work better for the administrative side of things... so civil service is more like national service. You're right... it would have to be for a year or two to get things done. And anyway, they are supposed to do what the population want... aren't they? I'm sure a history buff friend of mine told me once that communist militia units in (I think) the Spanish civil war used to takes turns at being commander.

But... all you have to do to that is remove the exams and add some "lobbying" to try and influence the selections at each level... and you end up with what we've got :/ I had in mind something more like jury service

Or we could all take turns...