The British Are Coming!!!Post British Empire Empire Coins.

Stunning! A Super-desirable coin...it probably looks larger than it is; but I can feel it in my hand: about the size of a US half-dollar, with the heft to match and the oily touch of copper. Delightful!

 

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I will add a few shillings....

George III Shilling - 1819

 

George II Shilling - 1758

Dark tone.

 

George II Shilling - 1736

 

George II Shilling - 1727

 

A " bob " from Downunder:

 

What a beauty !!

 

The nick- name of this coin actually was " The bar-maids nightmare ". The size of the doubleflorin is almoust equal to the crown. With 1 shilling a differnce between the two , the guy or the girl at the tap would have to be extra carefull if the balance was supposed to be right after closingtime.

 

286 years...and look at Him! Something about old British coins...so very attractive.

 

I'd be grateful for a side-by-side photo comparison of those two (doubleflorin & crown).

Reason being that I cannot read anything on this (or some others, for that matter) that expresses denomination. Is it there? In Latin? Or am I just blind?

 

George I Shilling - 1723 - SS - C

 

Queen Anne Shilling - 1711

 

Here are a Crown and Double florin side by side for comparison as requested...

 

WIlliam III Shilling - 1696

 

The term "Maundy Money" is used to describe the coins handed out by the monarch to the poor on Maundy Thursday - a practice that goes back centuries. Since the advent of milled coinage, this has settled down to be a set of silver coins consisting of One Penny, Two penny (or Tuppence) Three pence and Four pence. British coin collectors refer to all such just as "Maundy Money" and complete sets of four are the most sought after.

To add to the confusion some of the same coins may also have been circulation coinage at the same time, and even when they weren't, it was possible as a collector to apply to the Bank of England for a set for collecting purposes, so the actual numbers produced far exceed those actually handed out by the monarch. (There are many other confusions to this topic - I do not have the time to write a book on it!)

 

A very useful list, however to be pernickety, a few omissions:

1/16th of a Penny - a Quarter Farthing
1/12th of a Penny - a Third of a Farthing
1 and 1/2 of a penny - known as a "Three ha'pence"

All of these were in use in the 19th century, although often in the colonies more than at home.

Also it may help to know that the Angels, and all the Noble coins are much older having gone out of circulation before we changed to milled coinage in the 17th century. In fact there have been a number of other denominations in antiquity, including the Unite (with various multiples and fractions), the Broad, the Leopard, and an earlier version of the Florin which did not equate to 24 pence. An English hammered coin specialist can probably add even more!

The Guinea coinage went out of service in about 1816 when the Sovereign was introduced as the main gold coinage. Many of the other coins have had short or intermittent histories - the Double Florin was only issued in 4 years from 1887 to 1890.

By the time we decimalised in 1971 the coins still in use were:

Halfpenny - also called Ha'pence
Penny
Brass Threepence
Sixpence - colloquially a Tanner
Shilling (12 pence) - colloquially a Bob
2 Shilling (florin)
Half Crown (2 and 1/2 Shillings) - sometimes referred to as "Half a dollar"
Crown (5 shillings - strictly only commemorative issues by then) - traditionally a dollar.

I was at school then, so I remember the "old money" with affection. Computers would hate it, but it had practical advantages - you could handle dividing amounts by 2, 3 or 4 much more easily than with decimal coin systems.

 

And to add some pictures to the thread, here a couple of lovely 18th Century tokens I acquired recently:

1794 City of Bath Halfpenny token featuring the Camel - edge reads payable in Lancaster, London or Bristol.
1793 Norwich Cit halfpenny token featuring a mounted Dragoon of the Queen's Bays and their barracks. - edge plain.

 

I know I have been posting a lot to this thread today. I hope that people do not mind too much. I haven't seen most of these coins for about 30 years and I have taken the opportunity to get them out, handle them and photograph them as well as showing them to my son who has his own world coin collection. He has now expressed an interest in "acquiring" for which read me donating these to his collection....

After a small search I have found my Half Crowns.... I need to track down my bronzes. I used to collect farthings and have some of the fractionals mentioned above knocking about somehwere too..

George IV Half Crown - 1829