Here's an interesting coin - a totally stupid denomination and one of the smallest coins I've ever seen. 1834 Great Britain 1 1/2 pence. (Shown with dime for size comparison). I'd be curious to know the story behind this. I can't imagine there was much call for it.
The 1834 had the highest mintage of 800,000.. That's 1,200,000 Pence! I want to hare this Numista image with you -
The origin was a period of forty years on and off of a chronic shortage of small change. The half threepence was a logical step down from the sixpence, half a shilling. Of course, the fact that it was silver meant the size was miniscule and it was no real answer to the coinage problem. The 20 years from about 1790 to 1810 were a period when there was virtually no state coinage of farthings to pennies worth mentioning, hence the vast range of token coinage. Many efforts were made to establish a new coinage because a copper coin worth a penny in copper was very large and heavy and the famous cartwheel twopence was absurd. The idea of making a copper penny worth a penny in metal was slowly abandoned, but the idea that the currency should be worth money in itself hung on in some quarters leading to a silver coin that was worth its weight in silver. As is usual with government projects this arrived 15 or 20 years after it would have done any good. Many of the coins were packed off to the colonies where tiny amounts of money were involved in deals, to join the fractional farthings in obscurity. This was also the period of the silver groat or 4 pence, a coin so easily confused with the silver threepence that any random assortment of silver threepences today is likely to contain the odd groat that has slipped in unnoticed.
I just sold this lot of GB silver 3d. on another website -- note the groat at the bottom. http://stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=63518
I always thought the groats were for British Guiana, as you say in your listing. I have a few of those too. I have an interest in coins with unusual denominations. That's why I bought this one. I don't have a comprehensive list or photos available, but I have a lot of weird coins like this. Portugal 4 centavo, Panama 1 1/4 cent, Venezuela 12 1/2 centimos, etc. I have a half fathing and a 1/3 farthing somewhere too. The 1/3 farthing was for Malta.
I bought a hoard of Panama 1¼c, red AU-BU sliders, years ago, still got a dozen left. Another one of the oddities of GB denominations, £1 = 20 shillings One Guinea = 21 shillings They struck 1/3 guinea gold coins for quite a few years = 7 shillings. from www.StudyEnglishToday.net: "A guinea (first issued on February 6th, 1663) was sometimes used as a unit of account. A guinea was a gold coin, originally made of gold from the Guinea coast of Africa, worth 21 shillings (or one pound and 1 shilling) in old British money. A guinea was considered a more gentlemanly amount than £1. A gentleman paid his tailor in shillings, but his barrister in guineas." ============== I have not been able to find a sign (like £) for guineas - maybe there isn't any...?
I remember reading British novels and they always talked about guineas and I wondered what that meant.
In my youth auctions at the swankier auction houses were still conducted in guineas 130 years after the coin was discontinued, and racehorses were sold in guineas far more recently. As far as I know there never was a symbol for guineas, the pound sign abbreviations of L S D derive from the Roman Librae, solidi, denarii. This usage had persisted for about 1600 years. Decimal currency in 1970 abolished it. The pound sign lingers on, the use of d for penny is now abolished, 1 decimal penny is 1p instead of 1d.
