I love it when I find a ‘sleeper’ for a client, and this one is a cracker.

A 1675 gold guinea of Charles II turned up in a mixed lot of British coins, which ordinarily would sell for £1200 to £1800.

Bought from a dealer in the 1950’s, who amazingly failed to spot the misspelling of the King’s name; it should read CAROLVS but actually says CRAOLVS.

There are estimated to be around 20 examples known, so it is a true rarity.

It’s off to auction with Duke’s of Dorchester on 12th September, where it will fall subject to the vagaries of bidding. None of us in the coin world who are watching know if it will be £6,000 or £26,000!

TIME WILL TELL ….. or maybe TME WLL TELL !

We have had Britannia on our coins since Roman times, but most notably from the reign of Charles II onwards……and in many different guises, as engravers & designers have come and gone.

My favourite of modern times is this one, from the Britannia silver range of bullion coins, by a designer called Philip Nathan. The lines over the image represent waves of the sea and she is a wearing a Corinthian helmet as a nod back to her older Roman image.

Britannia is also a term for a type of silver, purer than sterling. Britannia is 95.8% silver content, whilst sterling is 92.5%. Way back in 1697 Parliament voted to change our silver from sterling to the higher Britannia grade, but because this new form was softer this was changed back to sterling after complaints from silversmiths over their difficulties working with it.

This lovely coin turned up in a mixed box of copper I bought at auction recently. About the size of 50pence (but much, much thicker and heavier) it holds a story of power, deceit, assassination & murder - all in her short 33 year life.

A daughter of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, she was forced into a politically motivated marriage at the age of around 14 to Lucius Verus, a co-ruler with Aurelius.

Before she was 20, and after having three children, her husband died and she was pushed into an unwanted marriage to a Syrian Roman trader twice her age.

Her brother Commodus was now the new co-ruler, but due to his erratic actions Lucilla and others plotted to kill him…….maybe also because Lucilla despised his wife! The plot failed and Lucilla was banished to the island of Capri.

Now that doesn’t sound too bad, except within months Commodus sent as assassin to kill her off; followed by the murder of her son just to ensure her dynasty was fully extinguished.

Never mind the question ‘what did the Romans do for us?’ - how about ‘What did the Romans do to each other?’

PS The coin is a bronze/copper sestertius, with an image of Venus on the reverse.

The picture shows a 1797 ‘cartwheel’ twopence (which was a hefty 2 ounces of copper) circled by a few three-halfpence coins, which was a short-lived denomination equivalent to 1/160th of a pound…....which now makes decimalisation seem like a good idea now!

The three-halfpence was produced on-and-off from 1834 until 1862 for use in the colonies, mainly in Ceylon and the West Indies, where the English threepence and sixpence also circulated.

Weighing less than a gram of silver it is smaller than our current 5p coin and must have been hard to handle and easy to lose.

In Jamaica it was called a ‘quatty’ because it was a quarter of a sixpence.

In terms of value most are worth between £10 & £20 in Fine to Very Fine condition, and between £100 & £200 for uncirculated examples.

I recently bought a small collection of white five pound notes, which prompted to me to compare how the size has reduced over the years……actually not only the size but also the material used.

At just under 4x the size of our modern polymer fiver, these paper giants were not made for wallets, so must have been rolled or folded when carried around.

Historically, the last ones were printed in 1956 and they were withdrawn from circulation in 1961.

In collecting terms their value ranges from maybe £40 for a well-used 1950s example up into many thousands for earlier, good condition examples, especially those issued outside of London (with Bristol & Plymouth examples being very scarce).

In the war time the Germans used prisoners in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp to forge these, and other notes, to fund spying operations around the globe, and it is reckoned over £200 million worth were made; so collectors have to know how to spot what we’re generally high quality forgeries.

I have just valued a cabinet of coins and medals inherited from a bank vault which has been untouched since the 1940s.

The contents span Roman, through to Charles I, Cromwell-era coinage, Victoria, all way along to George VI, as well as many foreign gold & silver pieces.

The bottom drawer was a lovely ‘piece of history’ which I feel honoured to touch.

Two Waterloo medals (awarded to the Royal Foot Artillery & 7th Hussars), along with general service medals of the 1800s from India, Crimea, Burma & Syria. Each one representing a real person, miles from home....names like Waddle, Loghorn, Westcott & Patterson.

More research to be done to track down more of their stories.

We English do have a troubled historical past, which most certainly needs rethinking and rewriting……and here’s a very rare coin which sits uncomfortably in our colonial story.

The piece itself turned up in a mixed tin of world coins, dead woodlice, sewing pins, a child’s tooth and cake crumbs. It’s sometimes a mucky business being a coin dealer!

It’s a 1941 copper one cent, with an H mintmark to show it was minted at Heaton in Birmingham. Three million were made but, due to the ending of Sarawak as an independent state, they were immediately melted down.

However, around 50 are known to exist; making it very rare but probably ‘only’ worth about £300. (British or American coins with a mintage that low would be worth in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds.)

Historically, Sir James Brooke was gifted the state of Sarawak in Borneo in 1841 after helping the Sultan by crushing a rebellion and then hounding down sea pirates around the island in order to make trade with the mainland easier.

He became known as the Rajah of Sarawak, and was nicknamed The White Rajah, as were two further relatives who inherited the title (including Charles as pictured on this coin).

The state was ceded back to the Malaysia in the late forties, and all three Rajahs are buried in Sheepstor village church on Dartmoor.

The pictured coins are a small part of a group sold to me a a retired River Thames mudlark - they totalled 180 coins in all, mostly from the 1600s.

There were however plenty from earlier, known as hammered coinage, like the lovely Henry VIII groat (4d) from around 1530 pictured in the centre.

Above that is an Edward VI shilling from c. 1551 and to its right an Elizabeth I sixpence dated 1562.

The seller did his searching in the 1960s, when anybody could head down to the river and try their luck. Nowadays you need a ‘Thames Foreshore Permit’ from the Port of London Authority which costs £96 pa and allows digging down to 7.5cms maximum.

Earlier in the year I wrote about taking this US gold coin to auction for a client.

Against a mid estimate of £55,000, it eventually sold for £140,000; so I have a very, very happy customer.

There were two telephone bidders from America fighting over it, going up in £2000 increments. It was pretty exciting to watch. They hesitated around £80K, then at £100K, but kept pushing it along for a while longer!

Amazing to think that the buyer paid a 20% commission on top (£28,000), to which then VAT was added.

It seems appropriate on the almost-a year-ago anniversary of the Capitol Hill riots to speak of things that are not what they seem.

Over the years us dealers accumulate forged coins, usually spotting them in a timely fashion but sometimes getting caught out (particularly in our early years when learning the trade); so here is a photo of some of the pieces I’ve ended up with over time.

If they were all genuine the value would be around £8K, but as forgeries they are worth just a few pounds to a group of collectors who like to own these things out of interest.

The most intriguing ones are the two large ingots - these are high quality copies of Chinese sycee, which were silver trading ingots used for commerce from around 1200AD until the late 1800’s. Different sizes were cast, generally of standard weight, so that they could be readily accepted as a form of “currency” and they were given the denomination of ‘taels’.

My two are modern copies, made of steel I think, intended to fool collectors. If real, their value would be over a thousand pounds.

I am lucky enough to be selling this at auction for a client.

With a mid-estimate of £55,000, this 1830 gold Quarter Eagle is expected to exceed this figure due to its rarity and exceptional condition.

It turned up in a very old, inherited collection of mixed coins, which the owner thought could be worth maybe five or six thousand pounds. It’s good to be wrong sometimes!

Well done & thank you to St. James’s Auctions in central London for cataloguing the coin so beautifully ready for their Premier Sale at the end of January 2022.

Pictured is a Civil War crown dated 1653 from the time of Oliver Cromwell, in absolutely fantastic condition and worth several thousand pounds.

Coins of all denominations were produced during the time of the Commonwealth (1649 - 1660), all with the same design of St George’s cross and Ireland’s coat of arms, thus doing away with the royal coat of arms. They were also made using English words rather than Latin, to give a better representation of the prevalent Protestant religion although I think also to add appeal to the general, less educated population.

It is part of an incredible inherited collection which I have the honour to be identifying & valuing for the owners, so hopefully more related items will follow this one.

Well actually, with her devil-may-care hairdo.

In 1954 Canada had a new portrait of the Queen engraved for their $1 banknotes, which were then issued into circulation in quite large numbers.

However they had to be smartly withdrawn and re-engraved because the devil’s face appeared on the side of her head, getting these notes their nickname of the ‘devil’s hairdo’.

The top note has the devil’s face, the lower being the reissued version. These devil notes are not greatly rare but are far less common than the reprinted ones.

.......or should I perhaps say ‘ les murs s'effondrent ‘

A client of mine was a builder in Northern France in the seventies and when renovating a barn this pile of almost solid silver 5 Franc coins was found hidden within an old stone wall.

They are all mostly uncirculated and date from the 1960s, at a time when France stopped making silver coins for general use. Hidden for tax evasion maybe?

Anyway, a great find on the day. Magnifique!

I have just purchased a collection of UK silver coins dated from 1920 to 1946, which included 200+ halfcrowns.

I tried to count them by making a single pile of 16 coins (£2 face value) and then simply stacking similar-sized columns next to it.

Total failure !! .....as the wear from circulation is so great on some coins that size definitely mattered.

Both piles have 16 coins, but the rigours of use have quite literally worn away the equivalent of a whole coin when compared to the other stack. Vapourised into the history of wallets, tills, purses and human hands I suppose.

Simply a big, big thank you to my private clients over recent weeks.

A large majority have given some of their sale proceeds to the charities I support, or in some cases to their own favoured causes. I never ask or suggest this is done, so it is from people’s own hearts and thoughts.

Anything from giving a few pounds, up to giving 50% of their profits. Brilliant.

The coins pictured form part of a small but valuable collection, part proceeds of which have gone to a military veterans’ welfare charity.

To some collectors coins are investments; others lines of numbers to be completed and stored away; and to some they are points of interest in our histories.

There are those who simply love the beauty and strength of the images, and here is a perennially favourite one. George and the dragon on a high quality example of an 1821 crown.

Even the head of King George IV is a thing of beauty on a coin of this size.

Just for a change I’m putting in an example of the non-numismatic things that so often turn up in boxes & tins.

This is a recent favourite, simply because of the strong design, and the quality of finish of the items.

The square Great Dane Club medallion is Birmingham silver from 1946-1947 and inscribed ‘Dawn’ on the back, which may be the owner’s name or the dog’s. Or both?

The Club was formed in 1883 and is still up and running.

As for the dog badges, all of which appear to be base metals, I assume they are show awards of some sort? Two appear to depict Great Danes, whilst the others are different breeds of ‘our best friend’.

Great things, which I hope I can find a good and appropriate home for in due course.

For me the most beautiful design on any series of modern coins are the Irish coins from the 1920s to the 1960s. Simple, flowing images of animals that have meaning to Ireland’s culture & economy.

The coins were chosen in the 1920s by a committee chaired by the poet WB Yeats; the winning designer being Percy Metcalf who was a sculptor & artist. The coins as a group are often called ‘the barnyard set’ which I think is misleading given the full flock, herd, shoal, etc includes a woodcock, an Irish Wolfhound, a salmon, horse, pig, hare, hen & bull.

My photo shows only examples of the threepence and sixpence.

From around 1660 until 1797 the English government did not issue any penny coins, causing many problems amongst the working classes who desperately needed low value coinage to get by in life.

So, in 1797 they minted copper pennies and twopences, which were dubbed ‘cartwheels’ because of their ridiculous weight and size. They had by law to contain copper to match the face value of the coin itself, so the twopence (pictured) weighed 2 ounces!

The value of copper rocketed shortly afterwards and so these coins were being scrapped, which forced the public back to using token coinage issued by companies & shops. It wasn’t until 1860 that the classic United Kingdom penny came into general use, all the way until the last mintage in 1967.

The other coin is a 1904 silver 2.5 cents from Panama - totally at the other end of the scale, although like the 1797 coin still fitting into the category of ‘rather ill-thought-out design’.

Will coins disappear altogether soon? Some think so. I reckon they’ve got another generation or two before this happens 🤞🏻