A bronze as from Canusium depicting a laureate Janus with the prow of a ship on the reverse

CNG - http://www.cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=127320

Unknown mint magistrate. 209-208 BC (or later). Æ As (22.84 g, 1h). Uncial standard. Canusium mint. Laureate head of bearded Janus; horizontal I (mark of value) above, CA below Prow of galley right; horizontal I (mark of value) above, CA to right. Crawford 100/1a (citing 6 specimens of all varieties in Paris); Sydenham 309a. VF, dark brown patina, earthen deposits, minor flan flaw on obverse. Rare.

Happy New Collecting Year when we get there. 

Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past. The month of January is named for Janus

1 January was New Year day. On that day it was customary to exchange cheerful words of good wishes. For the same reason everybody devoted a short time to his usual business, exchanged dates, figs and honey as a token of well wishing and made gifts of coins called strenae.

Numa built the Ianus geminus , a passage ritually opened at times of war, and shut again when Roman arms rested.  In wartime the gates of the Janus were opened, and in its interior sacrifices and vaticinia were held, to forecast the outcome of military deeds. The doors were closed only during peacetime, an extremely rare event

 

                                             A very Happy Coin Collecting Christmas to everyone. 

I keep promising myself I will stop getting more places to store coins, however it does not work. My collection grows sideways and possibly not upwards. I am reusing an old album I was given in the 1980s because it is a cheap and easy way to house cheap and easy coins. These are the modern world coins, taken from circulation on trips, which have no value at all except they are interesting and perhaps one day will be old and probably no value then. 

They show how coins vary to show changes in fashion, politics and economics. the real value of a coin is that is shows a moment in time, and was used by ordinary people in their day to day lives. 

Happy collecting!

 The theme of today's meeting was messengers and angels.

the first photograph is of an Oxford token issued for John Tey at the Angel pub in High Street and a rather nice Henry VII angel. 

The next is another gold coins. These were issued by Charles I and his son Charles II of Anjou who was king of Naples and Sicily. The ones issued by his son are much rarer. They both issued a saluto d’argento which are silver coins with similar designs. The word salute means greeting in Italian and refers to the Angel’s message to Mary which he begins by saying “Hail”.  The legend is AVE GRACIA PLENA DOMINUS TECUM which means Hail (you who are) full of grace, The Lord (is) with you.

The lily between them is both a symbol of purity and of the French royal house. The arms on the other side are those of the house of Anjou with the heraldic fleur de lys and the arms of the kingdom of Jerusalem. The engraver was Giovanni Fortino, 1266–1278

Lastly we have some medallions commemorating the French invasion of Wales in 1797.

Thanks to Charles Riley for first and last photos. 

Middle Photo: Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com

 Austria and Vienna 

The theme this month was the coins of Austria ranging from the euro and going back to kreuzers and hellers. An interesting subject which also includes the Austria Netherlands and Italy. 

First two pictures used  by king permission of http://www.charlesriley.co.uk/

the medallion is by a Nuremberg goldsmith and medallist Jacob Wolrab. 

 

The Battle of Vienna (German: Schlacht am Kahlen Berge or Kahlenberg (Battle of the Bald Mountain);  took place at Kahlenberg Mountain near Vienna on 12 September 1683 after the imperial city had been besieged by the Ottoman Empire for two months. The battle was fought by the Holy Roman Empire led by the Habsburg Monarchy and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, both under the command of King John III Sobieski, against the Ottomans and their vassal and tributary states.

The battle was won by the combined forces of the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the latter represented only by the forces of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland (the march of the Lithuanian army was delayed, and they reached Vienna after it had been relieved).  Historians state the battle marked the turning point in the Ottoman–Habsburg wars, a 300-year struggle between the Holy Roman and Ottoman Empires. During the 16 years following the battle, the Austrian Habsburgs gradually recovered and dominated southern Hungary and Transylvania, which had been largely cleared of Ottoman forces. The battle is noted for including the largest known cavalry charge in history.

Several culinary legends are related to the Battle of Vienna.

One legend is that the croissant was invented in Vienna, either in 1683 or during the earlier siege in 1529, to celebrate the defeat of the Ottoman attack on the city, with the shape referring to the crescents on the Ottoman flags. This version of the origin of the croissant is supported by the fact that croissants in France are a variant of Viennoiserie, and by the French popular belief that Vienna-born Marie Antoinette introduced the pastry to France in 1770.

Another legend from Vienna has the first bagel as being a gift to King John III Sobieski to commemorate the King's victory over the Ottomans. It was fashioned in the form of a stirrup to commemorate the victorious charge by the Polish cavalry.

There is an often recited story that, after the battle, the residents of Vienna discovered many bags of coffee in the abandoned Ottoman encampment. The story goes on that, using this captured stock, Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki opened the first coffeehouse in Vienna and one of his ideas was to serve coffee with milk, a practice that was unknown in the Islamic world. However, this story was first mentioned in 1783; the first coffeehouse in Vienna had been established by the Armenian Johannes Theodat in 1685. Another more likely story is that the captured stock of bitter coffee was mixed with sugar and steamed milk to produce a drink that was named Cappuccino (or kapuziner, in German) either in honour of the Capuchin Franciscan Marco d'Aviano who had inspired the Catholic forces to unity and defence or because the Capuchin priest had a role in inventing

 

Photographs

 Used by kind permission of

GORNY & MOSCH  Giessener Münzhandlung GmbH

 Text

Used by kind permission of https://coinsweekly.com/

Source – Wikipedia

 The theme for the next meeting is collecting ancient coins by theme, or how to collect ancient coins.  The classical world is so large and overwhelming, where does a collector begin? Books on these coins can be expensive and difficult to get hold of or do not cover the series sufficiently widely. 

here are some suggestions, 

1. Get  Marc Antony Legionary issues or the military types of Gallienus
2. Collect lifetime portraits of the twelve Caesars, or the Five Good Emperors, or those from the Year of the Five Emperors
3. Get all bust types for one emperor
4. All the coins depicting the Circus Maximus or a bridge, boat, camp gates or captives.
5. Get coins featuring Britannia
6. Collect coins of female rulers
7. Get one of each recurring reverse, such as Liberalitas, Pax or Consecratio
8. Or just get anything that is interesting and you like!

Good advice, stick to a theme, although to be honest I have never followed it!

 The theme for the next meeting is "outposts of Empire" which includes commonwealth coins. 

I think commonwealth coins give the designer considerable scope to work with. 

Some of the best designed coins are from Commonwealth countries. 

 Of course other countries have had empires including France and Germany. Again French colonial coins are often well designed. 

I wonder what it feels like to be at an outpost of empire. Britain was an outpost of the Roman empire for many centuries.  

 Old Coins

The trolley was heavily laid down with bags full of brass thruppenny bits (three-pence pieces), silver-coloured sixpences, bronze pennies and two shillings — it was not easy to pull it along in a busy high street even with a colleague pushing from the rear. At the same time as pushing and pulling, both of us kept checking that no bags or coins fell on the way. That day, we were taking the money to a competitor’s bank which was running low on its supply of hard cash.

Back in the 1960s, a one-penny coin measured 31 millimetres in diameter and weighed 10 grams. Before we decimalised in 1971, twelve pennies (12 pence) made up a shilling, and twenty shillings made a pound. Hence 240 pence was the equivalent in monetary value of a one-pound banknote. There were no pound coins then, pound coins were not introduced in this country until 1983. Each of our 1960's cloth bags held the worth of five pounds, that's the equivalent of 1,200 pennies, or, in weight: 12 kilograms — the same as a dozen 2lb bags of sugar!

A trip to open up a small sub-office in the morning involved having a large suitcase of cash double-strapped to one wrist, while in our other hand we held a bank truncheon (a rounded heavy stick) to stave off attackers. We’d frequently travel in a local taxi where our usual driver, a portly gentleman I recall, would drive us very slowly while he smoked his pipe. We’d telephone the main branch to report we had arrived safely at our destination – having survived both attackers and the smoke!

Everyday use for coins back then was to feed a pay-as-you-go gas meter built into many homes. Most of these locked metal boxes were fed with shillings, and so it was essential to keep a well-stocked supply of these coins at home to ensure the heating stayed on. These meters would be emptied regularly and it was customary for people to buy-back from their meter-man (only men held that job in our area) the same set of coins they would empty, for re-use. Some would have been older, special specimens set aside to keep, but when the lights went out any coin would do in the rush to restore power. Sometimes on collection day the coins were exchanged for banknotes by mistake.

Ultimately coin bags of meter shillings would be paid in over the sub-office counter. As a cashier in the 1960’s I was then able to discover shillings dating back to the new coinage (1816-1820) of George third and those of Queen Victoria struck with ‘young head’ ‘jubilee head’ or ‘veiled head’.

There were Florins to be found of Edward VII, one pictured below, depicting Britannia standing - turned half-right towards us - holding an upright trident with an oval-shaped shield displaying the Union Jack, with the choppy waves of the sea behind her. She wears a Roman crested helmet, and her cloak stands out as if windswept.

A Florin of Edward VII

They say the model for Britannia was Lady Susan Hicks-Beach, the second daughter of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. The legend on this coin, dated on the ship’s prow 1903, is ‘ONE FLORIN TWO SHILLINGS’. To my mind, this coin by G.W. De Saulles is a beautiful piece of art which epitomizes the elegance of the Edwardian age.

Britannia, modelled by Lady Susan Hicks-Beach.

The collecting of old money really began, when in 1966, a young bank cashier became attracted to the coins in the till.

G K

 

The theme for this month is private mints. The first ones we might think of are the various Birmingham mints which issued pennies in the early years of the Twentieth Century. The KN and H pennies were keenly sought by coin collectors checking their change in the 1970s. 

The Mint, Birmingham, check made of copper,  arms of Birmingham, the mint birmingham around, six-pointed star punctuation, revs. ralph heaton & sons coiners around to the english and foreign governments

Lot 548 (part) Date of Auction: 2nd April 2014

Sold for £190  Estimate: £80 - £100

Image courtesy of 

Dix Noonan Webb

The International Coin, Banknote, Medal & Jewellery Specialists

The Birmingham Mint, originally known as Heaton's Mint or Ralph Heaton & Sons, started producing tokens and coins in 1850 as a private enterprise, It was created by Ralph Heaton II, using second-hand coin presses bought from the estate of Matthew Boulton.

On 1 April 1850 the auction was announced of equipment from the defunct Soho Mint, created by Matthew Boulton around 1788. At the auction on 29 April Ralph Heaton II bought the four steam-powered screw presses and six planchet presses for making blanks from strip metal. These were installed at the Bath Street works, and in that year trade tokens were struck for use in Australia. In 1851 coins were struck for Chile using the letter H as a mintmark. The same year copper planchets were made for the Royal Mint to make into pennies, halfpennies, farthings, half-farthings and quarter-farthings. In 1852 the Mint won a contract to produce a new series of coins for France. In this the Mint pioneered the minting of bronze. Ralph Heaton III (son of Ralph II) took key workers to Marseilles to equip and operate the French mint there, staying to fulfil the contract, and producing 750 tons of Napoléon III bronze coins from 1853 to 1857.

In 1853 the Royal Mint was overwhelmed with producing silver and gold coins. The Birmingham Mint won its first contract to strike finished coins for Britain – 500 tons of copper, struck between August 1853 and August 1855, with another contract to follow in 1856. These coins had no mint mark to identify them as from Birmingham. During the peak of operation the four original Boulton screw presses were striking about 110,000 coins per day.

As overseas orders increased, particularly for India, the Mint added a new lever press and further equipment, filling the Bath Street premises. In 1860 the firm bought a 1-acre (0.40 ha) plot on Icknield Street (the current site, since enlarged) and constructed a three-storey red brick factory. Completed in 1862 it employed 300 staff. It was at this time the largest private mint in the world. In 1861 a contract for bronze coins for the newly unified Italy was signed, the Mint sending blanks and equipment to Milan to be struck into finished coins by their staff in Milan.

In 1871 the first order for silver coinage was for Canada, and in 1874 the first gold was struck – Burgersponds for the new South African Republic – 837 pieces. Between 1896 and 1898 the Mint struck all of Russia's copper coins (over 110,000,000 coins per year).

Orders for colonial coins, blanks and bar metal were a steady source of business until, in 1912, an order for 16.8 million bronze coins for Britain, and in 1918 and 1919, and further orders for 7.1 million pence saw the mint striking coins for the home market. British penny coins minted by Heaton and dated 1912 can be identified by a very small upper case letter 'H' alongside the date: many of these coins were removed from circulation by collectors. In 1912, the Mint saw its first competition as the Kings Norton Metal Company was also contracted to supply bronze blanks to the Royal Mint, and in 1914 struck coins for the colonies. In both 1918 and 1919 the Kings Norton Metal Company struck a batch of bronze pennies which can also be identified by the upper case letters 'KN' appearing to the left of the date.

In 1949 the Mint produced an edition of the Maria Theresa thaler, a silver "trade dollar" widely used in the Middle East and previously minted by the Vienna Mint, or later, the Rome Mint. Further mintings were in 1953, 1954 and 1955.

In later years, the plant became increasingly busy with the introduction of the Euro within the European Union; the mint produced several million €1 and €2 coins. However, a slump in trade and contractual agreements between them and the Royal Mint resulted in the sale of the mint in late 2003.

 source Wikipedia. 

The theme today is civil war and revolution.

The first two coins are from the French city of Strasbourg and are dated 1815. One has N for Napoleon and the other L for Louis and were emergency coins of necessity made from bell money. The city changed hands and hence the two different initials but otherwise the design did not change much.  I bought these for £2.50 each in 2002 which was quite a bargain.

The next coin commemorates the 20^th anniversary of the Algerian revolution. Then we have a coin marking the failed Turkish coup in 2016 and lastly a coin revolutionary Iran.

It is hard to find a country that has not had a civil war or revolution. Chile, Norway and Sweden are possible contenders. 

What coins would you choose to link with this theme? The American Civil War tokens and coins from the English Civil War? Revolutionary France. I am not sure if there are any coins from the Swiss Civil War.
there are any coins which come from regions resulting from conflict. Korean coins, north Cyprus, Vietnam to name a few.

Happy 4th July!

The Virginia Halfpenny of 1773 - The coin that beat the American Revolution.

On May 20, 1773 the Virginia Assembly authorized the coining of a halfpenny at the Tower mint in London. The coin, engraved by Richard Yeo, was made of copper at a weight of sixty halfpence to the pound. Five tons of halfpence (about 670,000 pieces) arrived in New York aboard the ship "Virginia" on February 14, 1774 but were not distributed until written royal permission was obtained about a year later. The coins only became available to colonists fifty days before the American War of Independence started.

The Virginians hoarded the new halfpenny, along with all other copper coins, until the end of the war. Although the halfpenny contained the portrait of King George the coins were used in Revolutionary and post war Virginia. The pound was the currency of Virginia until 1793.

Rosa Americana Tokens 1722-1724 Coins that were not agreeable or much use.

William Wood, owner of several copper and tin mines, hoped to make a profit producing coins for use in Ireland and America. Through the king's mistress, the Duchess of Kendal, he was able to obtain a royal indenture to produce coins for Ireland on June 16, 1722 and a second indenture on July 22, 1722, authorising him to produce one hundred tons of coins for the American colonies over a period of fourteen years for an annual fee of £300 to the king. The coins were made of an alloy called Bath metal composed of 75% brass, 20% zinc (mixed with tin and bismuth) and 5% silver and were to weigh slightly less than half the weight of English coins. The Bath metal planchets had to be hot when they were impressed between the dies to keep the dies from cracking. The heating of the planchets caused gas bubbles to form in the metal producing a porous surface on the coins, often with some discoloration.

These lightweight coins were not accepted by the colonists. Wood's penny was similar to a London halfpenny and his halfpenny was like the farthing, while his twopence did not correspond in weight to any currently circulating coin. In New York, merchants refused to accept the coins, Massachusetts preferred penny, two pence and three pence paper notes, rather than accept the Rosa Americana coins. Some colonies did accept them.

Because his coins were not accepted and no profits were made, Wood stopped minting coins in 1723. The Rosa Americana coins depict King George I on the obverse with the Tudor rose on the reverse. The obverse legend was one of several forms of the King's name and title while the reverse legend had various forms of ROSA AMERICANA and UTILE DULCI (the useful with the agreeable).

Information from The Coins of Colonial and Early America https://coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/

Easy as ABC....

The theme for this month's virtual meeting is coins and learning or education.

This includes commemorative medallions featuring universities and colleges and also school attendance medals.

I also found a jeton which has a maths teacher on it! it is in fact a reckoning piece showing a man keeping his accounts on a chequerboard and on the other side the alphabet. these jetons are found in different languages but started n Germany in the Sixteenth Century. I found an image of one where the die maker had got the wrong letter in- I overstruck on O. they all seem to have only I for I and J and V for U and V.

These are two South African university medallions

Happy V E Day 2020

To mark the occasion here are some Canadian coins, a Canadian meat token from the Second World War and a South African medallion commemorating peace. 

I could add the pennies from Jersey commemorating liberation. 

There was a suggestion in the Second World War that the image of a Spitfire or Hurricane aeroplane should be added to the penny in Britain. there was a galley warship and a lighthouse so why not? what do you think? 

  

We had our first virtual meeting at the weekend courtesy of zoom. Members swapped stories and impressions of lockdown.

A theme was tunnels and these medallions images kindly provided by Charles Riley illustrate this.
the question people are asking in the lockdown is whether this light at the end of the tunnel and of course there is. Collecting goes on, if anything stronger than ever, although we miss fairs and handling coins.

see http://www.charlesriley.co.uk/

This weekend we would have been looking at coins from the Baltic. Here are some.

The history of the Baltic states is fascinating. each country has a very individual culture language and background. Sadly they have been occupied by many different countries

This coin is from the Baltic area. I found it confusing at first and thought it looked like a Scottish coin. If I cannot tell Scotland from the Baltic it is fortunate I am not a pilot!

I will leave you thinking about it.

How did you get on with the world tour?

The coins come from Syria Burundi and China

and on the bottom row,

Bangladesh, Nepal and Korea.

Simple when you know. When I first started collecting I was confused by coins from Helvetica and Magyar and why did coins from Maroc have very old dates but were clearly new?

I do not think coins are confusing. They open up a world to us. 

Just what is needed if you are self isolating. 

Numismatic Virtual World Tour

If you are self isolating or stuck at home why not go round the world with these coins?  see if you can identify which countries they come from. 

Token collecting for your Good Health!

John Morse: Pirates in Watford or a health warning?

Many Seventeenth century tokens feature designs showing the issuer’s trade or occupation or heraldry. This is unusual as it shows a skeleton holding an hour glass and an arrow. Why is this?

The simple answer is a pun. The issuer was a man called John Morse which sounds like the word mors which is Latin for death.  The reverse side has the initials of the issuer, IM, for John Morse (Iohannes Morse in Latin), with a second I. Usually (if the issuer is a man), the initials include that of his wife, but Morse was widowed, hence the repetition of his initial (Unless his wife’s name was Irene or similar!).

There are references to John as a puritan preacher living in Watford. He had some dispute with William Penn, the Quaker who founded Pennsylvania. [i] The use of such a morbid image seems strange for a religious preacher. Although rare on tokens the image was well known in graveyards as you would expect, and also on pirate flags like the skull and crossbones. The addition of an hourglass meant that time was running out and an arrow hinted at violent or sudden death.  

This token was issued in 1666 the year of the Great Fire of London and a year after the Great Plague. Watford is less than twenty miles from London and survivors would have moved out to the countryside. Perhaps this token hints at the need to prepare against sudden or violent death.  So some tokens come with a health warning.

---

[i] Thomas Clarkson (1814) Memoirs of the Private and Public Life of William Penn Who Settled the State of Pennsylvania, and Founded the City of Philadelphia Philadelphia.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EZo9AAAAYAAJ

If you are self-isolating because of the pandemic here is a health-related coin. It is from Panama and is a 1/4 cuarto de balboa 2008. The inscription is protegete mujer

Which means protect yourself woman and is about breast cancer awareness.

Are there any health issues with coins?

There was a story in 2014 about the Royal Mint issuing coins clad in nickel.  Instead of the copper-nickel alloy that had been used since 1947, new 5p and 10p pieces were made from steel and coated with a layer of nickel. However, some people suffer from a nickel allergy.

You should wash your hands if you handle cash

In the Middle Ages a lot of people died as a result of coins – they were executed for counterfeiting them.

It is dangerous to swallow coins unless they are made of chocolate. If you do swallow one call a doctor for advice. Do not wait until you go to the toilet to see if there is any change.

Keep well!

The theme this month was mythical beasts on coins. The meeting coincided with the anniversary of introduction of decimal coins to Britain and the arrival of Storm Desmond.

The phrase mythical beasts suggests dragons and other heraldic animals. It is quite a difficult topic for coins. I only managed a dragon on a Chinese coin, a similar beast on a Thai modern coin and I am not sure what on another coin from Thailand. I could have added the dragon who was slayed by Saint George. This has been a favourite on coins and appears on colonial tokens.

Interestingly members brought 50 p coins with Mrs Tiggywinkle and Paddington Bear. I do not think they count as mythical beasts!

Transport was the theme of this month's meeting. Members brought coins and medallions relating to ships. there were no trains or planes. I suppose there are not many planes because they have only been around for just over a hundred years. Ships appear quite frequently- especially from countries with a maritime history such as Greece and Portugal.

What coins would you add?

 .