With the 50th anniversary of Decimal Day fast approaching, it has brought a lot of the pre-decimal coins back into the spotlight. When Britain went decimal on 15 February 1971, coins like the florin, shilling and half-crown became obsolete, but one coin endured into the next decade… The Sixpence. Worth 2.5p, it remained in circulation […]
The famous 1794 Flowing Hair Silver Dollar is widely acknowledged as being the first ever silver dollar coin. An example has just sold at auction for over $1m – one million times the coin’s face value. How does a coin with a scrap value of just $12 for its silver content become for millionaires only? […]
Every coin’s design tells a story, but sometimes if you look a little closer, you’ll see an additional feature in the form of a “mark”. But what are mint marks and privy marks? And what do they tell us about a coin? What’s in a mark? Marking a coin is not a new phenomenon. It […]
There is one coin that every serious American Numismatist owns. It’s the Morgan Dollar. Struck over 100 years ago, the Morgan Dollar represents the history of “old” America – of cowboys, outlaws and the frontier. Most serious collectors will have a Morgan Dollar in their collection, but very few will have the extremely rare – […]
The “Amon Carter” Flowing Hair Silver Dollar last sold in 2013 for $10m, but how does a coin get the same price tag as a small island, especially when the scrap value of the coin is a measly $12 for its silver content? It ticks all of the boxes for what to look for when […]
My grandfather was a keen collector and loved showing me his coins, but one piece always sticks in my memory. When he first showed me the outside of the case, I thought I was about to see some very old glasses or a perhaps some remarkably intricate fishing flies. There was no mistaking that, whatever […]
An awful lot of Sovereigns have been issued during Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s reign – over 50 different individual years and that’s before you consider all the various finishes from bullion to Proof. There have been many significant Sovereigns during her record-breaking reign that could lay claim to being the most important QEII Sovereign, […]
Every coin tells a story. Some have designs loaded with symbolism, such as a sword signalling a country’s strength, wreaths made up of the region or country’s main agricultural crops of the time or an olive branch acting as a symbol of peace. But only once has a monarch’s grief been represented on UK coins. […]
Every year, thousands of coin collectors and hundreds of dealers and Mints descend upon the Estrel Exhibition Centre in Berlin for the World Money Fair. It’s a pretty intense few days of one meeting after an other, being shown countless coins – some from countries I’ve never even heard of. So what caught my eye […]
In 2019, The Royal Mint reintroduced something a lot of us will be familiar with, but had actually been absent from a UK coin for almost 40 years. Cast your mind back to (or dig out) old 50p or 2p coins and you’ll see two words at the top of the coin’s reverse – “NEW […]