Crown vs 5 Shillings

[Berg 0]

Im aware of that 5 shillings equal a crown, but why does some coins have the nominal 1-crown in writing on them (like a gibraltar crown Ive seen) and some 5-shillings (like most "english" coins)? Are there some kind of "rule" when to use crown instead of 5-shilling?

[kuhli 0]

I really don't think it matters, just whatever the designers decide. If you think that the 5 shillings = 1 crown is confusing, look at the florins. Just for the UK, you have the "Gothic" florins, which read "one tenth of a pound", then you have the Edward VII and George V, which read "one florin", and then you have the George VI and Elizabeth II, which read "two shillings".

No wonder they had to go decimal! Too confusing for these modern kids to understand.

[Sylvester 15]

Actually there was a system in operation in the UK for how the denomination was expressed, that's if you can call it a system.

Now i'm a bit rusty in these areas so here goes;

The Gothic/Godless florins had 'one florin, one tenth of a pound' the reason for this was the florin was a new coin and they had to explain clearly what it was worth whilst coining a 'new' name for it (or rather a recycled one). They chose to express it as 'one tenth of a pound' rather than as 'two shillings' because it was a time of heightened interest in decimalisation, thus the florin was introduced as a step towards decimalisation in 1849. Hence why they raferred to it as a tenth of a pound.

All the other coins before 1936 (including florins after 1887), stated the denomination thusly;

Crown, Halfcrown, Florin, Shilling, Sixpence, Fourpence, Threepence, One Penny, Half Penny, Farthing, Half Farthing.

However by 1937 it was decided that it was time to modernise, the '20s and '30s being a period of 'art neuveax' (sp?) and new streamline styles and modern looking things. This new style of returning to basic and arguably blandness spread to the coinage. Terms such as Crown, Florin, were considered archaic and too dressed up, thus they decided to describe the coins in the barest terms possible.

thus from 1937 onwards we get;

Five Shillings, Halfcrown (this one lingered on, but 'Two Shillings and Sixpence' was a bit of a mouthful!), Two Shillings, One Shilling, Sixpence, Threepence...

So the answer to your question lies in fashion.

[mint_mark 9]

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.

[Geoff T 3]

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

This has reawakened something which has crossed my mind on a number of occasions, usually when I show people undenominated coins and they say "but how do you know the value?".

Is the use of undemoninated circulating coins a wholly British thing? Gold coinage is undenominated as well yet circulated internationally. Is this another example of the chauvinistic attitude which believed that what we produced would be recognised anywhere simply because it was British? There's a parallel here in the fact that we have never indicated the country of origin on our postage stamps.

G

[Sylvester 15]

I don't think it's purely because of we expect them to know where our coins are from, but as an educated guess i'd figure it to be two reasons why we have never bothered issuing country names and denominations on the coinage;

1) For the majority of the hammered series there was no indication of value on the coins (this is the same for most countries i should think) Okay Elizabeth I-Charles II hammered used to stick values on but the older system of not bothering was reimplemented when we switched to milled coinage in 1662. The reason for this is that countries issued coinage primarily for the native population and the majority would already know what value a coin of any given size was.*

*Another reason for going back to the practice of abandoning face value on coins in 1662 may have been to do with the fact that during the twilight years of the hammered coinage you'd have shillings and sixpences circulating stating their specific value (at issue) XII or VI, but due to clipping, holing and general wear the majority in the 1670s and 1680s would not have been circulating at the value inscribed on them. Can you imagine how confusing recieving two hammered groats in change would be, one circulating as 3 1/4d and the other as 2 3/4d based on weight value whilst both said IIII on them?

Perhaps the authorities were just playing it sensible by not putting denominations on the new milled coins, afterall the guineas were floating on the bullion market and thus their value changed from day to day, no point putting 20/- on them in 1663 when by 1693 they were circulating at say 30/- was there?

Particularly with regards to stamps why bother putting a country of origin on? Surely the postmark would give that away if the letter was going abroad anyhow, and i doubt very much that internally people would need reminding what country they were in.

2) Thinking of the Victorian Empire here another reason for perhaps declining to put on face values on coinage was because doing so might seem exclusive to the Empire. If the coin didn't have a face value on and was issued in Britain i suppose it could circulate anywhere in the Empire in theory, without causing confusion. If the coin stated 'Great Britain' would it be accepted in say Malta?

Think about Guernsey and Jersey coinage, shopkeepers are often reluctant to take them because they are clearly issued somewhere else than Britain, if the coins did not state a country of origin on most people would just take it as another one of those one off designs from the UK that turn up from time to time.

Therefore perhaps not putting on the country of origin was about ensuring that the coins were seen as inclusive rather than exclusive to the rest of the Empire?

With the decline of Empire in the 1920s-1940s it's interesting to note that this is the period when the stated denomination on coins makes it's big comeback.

The country name still eldudes though because it's just not essential. Glad to see we haven't stuck 'stupidity labels' pointing out the obvious on quite everything yet...

Like that recent newstory about a shopkeeper being complained at because his candles did not say "caution, these candles are flammable" I kid you not...

[mint_mark 9]

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"

[Berg 0]

Interesting reading