scottishmoney

Nice obverse Wha happened to the reverse

Love those old references, but even at £41, when I convert to dollars I pay waaaayyy ta much.

As a general rule foreign coins other than occasional Scottish or Irish in the early days never circulated in England proper before the 18th century. By the late 18th century the govt of George III rather neglected the coinage other than a small gold issue in the 1790's so much so that there was a coin shortage of memorable proportion throughout Britain, but most especially in industrialising England. Even occasional American silver dollars of the late 18th and very early 19th were overstruck and tariffed at 5/- per. Usually only silver or gold were the foreign coins to be circulated in England, the low denominations being fulfilled by private or municipal token issues. During the Angevin era some coins from France or Burgundy occasionally found their way to England and I have heard of even Ecus de Or(gold coins) being found in Kent etc by detectorists. In Scotland, the coinage pattern being rather different, it was not at all uncommon for French and Dutch states coinages to be circulated there. Duits turn up occasionally in metal detecting finds, they were the rough equivalent of a bodle or turner(twopence). During the era of Alexander III(1249-1286) English pennies made up about 75% of what circulated in Scotland, even with a then huge coinage of Scottish pennies during that reign. Until late in the reign of David II(1329-1371) Scottish coinages circulated to some extent in Lancashire and the York regions, but thereafter usually did not because they had become debased.

I am not so consumed with what the market has done, as what it will do into 2008-9 with all the grey clouding on the horizon economically in the USA because of the greedy and under-regulated home lending institutions and the fools that fell for it. Also the downturn in the dollar has a pricing affect even for British material, more than the continental coinages because there are more collectors of British material here in N. American than anywhere outside of Britain. Remember the Gold Offa Penny that was owned by Alan Davisson, a Minnesotan? The dollars destitution of late has rather cooled my interest in many things from Europe, Australia etc. because the prices are easily 40% higher now when I factor in dollar purchases for stuff priced in foreign currency, such as €uros, Sterling, or Canadian $. It is not just myself but many collectors are feeling the pinch of the soft dollar.

So in essence if I was a 10th century merchant, I would have my balance beam scale setup in my market and test coins all day long.

I believe it is interesting when coins were cut also, how consequentially diminutive they would become. I have what purports to be a half of a penny which is smaller in fact than what by the nature of it's cutting to be a farthing. In essence I would believe that in fact these coins continued to circulate, some being accepted based on the need of the recipient, but others may have in fact duly been discounted because of their diminutive status. I have numerous, several dozens in fact, of cut halfpennies, and farthings. They would be quite interesting to study with an accurate to 1/100th of a gramme scale.

Which is something I find with latter day references on Scottish, they tend to lump, overlook varieties etc. Coincraft made a reasonable attempt, but still overlooked some covered in earlier treatises. It would be interesting to get all the Eddie the I pennies out and weigh them to see the variances though.

I have some 1950's era references on Scottish coins, funny how the illustrations were usually hand drawn and almost cartoonish by comparison to our nowadays colour images at high res.

So are you telling me you will sell me your Tealby Pennies for a mere Quid?

Filled dies are very very common, I have a pile of coins on my desk now from circulation and a few of them have filled dies, mostly the pennies. I would doubt that you would get much more than the quid it is worth.

Hard to tell from the blurry image, but it could be a filled die error, this is where grease or something gets in the cavity that forms the letter in this case the E of one. This is the more likely, as I don't think it would be optimal to forge the Gibraltar coins, because they more likely get looked at and are not as easy to pass off as the British coins.

BTW welcome back Syl

There were standards in grains that they had to conform to. But you have to factor that even within one mint there were variables, and then after the coin left the mint the real fun began with sweating(shaking in a bag) or just plain outright clipping of the edges to remove the silver. It would thus be rather impossible to ascertain an accurate weight range for the coins. I have some pennies from Edward I that have been clipped free of all legends.

That sure is unfortunately the truth too. But I even find that with my Scots stuff. Quite often very rare or unique stuff is not even bothered with.

Somewhere in some bank, I have a bunch of Edward I pennies from the first coinage ca. 1272-1280 that were minted in Canterbury. During that coinage, I believe the pennies were either minted in London or Canterbury only and none of the other regional mints.

'Tis an Eddie the I, Canterbury mint.

Someone along the line, probably more recently, wiped it with a cloth to take off dust etc and rubbed some of the patina away.

I agree, just let Scotland go free and you keep Gordie, okay? Deal?

I cannot convince my wife to buy me the Lenticular Pig coin, so I am not even going to try for Spudnik.

Nah, it is just a Scottish sponsored plot in the BRM to discredit HRH and make her let Scottyland go free. Saorstat Albanaich!

I have done the same with Russian fakes on ebay, and so have numerous others. But the auctions are still present, doesn't hurt that the sellers are powersellers and ebay loves them.

Like ohmygawd, fleaBay actually removed a fraudulent auction. Record that one for the books, that so rarely happens.

This example is .925 silver, they went .500 after 1920, then cupro-nickel after 1947. Neat example of a WWI era tanner.

Well the language would have to be Latin, but the lettering could be abbreviations including down to one character for a word. The piece is not gold, but bronze.

Not British, but English namely Angevin era token. The fun part of these pieces is you see them from time to time for sale and not much is known about them. A few types are more common and seem to have originated in what is now Germany, but others originated in the Low Countries or France. I suggest the Angevin link because of the Fleur De Lis device on the reverse. This piece is most likely 14th-early 15th century in time frame. The enigma of them is that many times they have seemingly meaningless legends which may have meant something contemporarily but are indecipherable now. What is perplexing is the Fleur De Lis and the ship on the obverse which suggests a contemporary Noble gold coin. Because these are found from time to time, but so little is known about them they really do not command much interest or price. Which is unfortunate, because in my estimation they are most fascinating pieces. BTW feel free to post these inquiries at will, it makes the forum interesting.