Sunday 10 December 2017

Coins - small change 

I saw a good spread of coins today at my favourite dealer. I bought five out of ten or so Nineteenth Century Italian coins. Some of them neither I nor the dealer had ever seen before. They included coins from the Kingdom of Italy set up by Napoleon, Lombardy/Venetia controlled by Austria and Tuscany. An interesting set of coins in reasonable condition. None worth a fortune.

Why were they all low denominations? They were one, five or ten cent coins so what happens to the larger coins? I was offered a large collection last week of over a hundred and fifty coins. Not one large denomination coin at all .

Sunday 3 December 2017



The last meeting of the year was a talk by Shailendra Bhandare from the Ashmolean Museum        entitled 'Introduction to Islamic coins from the Indian Subcontinent'. It was very interesting and well presented. a fascinating introduction to this series. 


The coin illustrated here is a 1 Lats coin from Latvia. This is one of their excellent series of festive designs.  

There are many coins to chose from with a Christmas theme to suit all pockets. Latvian coins are some of my favourites. see the latest edition of Coin News magazine for more.