When do Foreign coins leave their country of origin?

I read ColonialDaves thread and it got me thinking what percentage of older foreign coins are brought over by those who actually are going to use them versus not(collector, momento). For example, I have a 1775 British Farthing; is it more likely someone brought it from Britain during or just after the Revolutionary War or that a collector brought it over dozens or hundreds of years later. Would love to hear people’s thoughts.

Nathan

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Where/how did the farthing come in to your possession?

 

I bought it at a coin store in Toronto 3 years ago.

 

Hmmm...a dealer could just as likely bought it in England or from some local whose great-great-whatever brought it with them from England. Hard to know I would think.

 

Who knows? That's part of the fun.

 

The way things move these days it's impossible to tell. That farthing could have been back and forth between continents a dozen times for all we know. It may just arrived in Toronto 3 years ago. It may have arrived 200 years ago.

I have the same historical fantasies. I wonder how an old coin I'm holding happened to make it into my hand. I wish we could track them and find out where they originated from. But we'll likely never know without provenance, word of mouth, or something.

 

Ancestery.com for coins would get a lot of business!

 

I suspect many foreign coins were commonly used in world trade when they were still contemporary, especially gold and silver coins from precious metal producing countries. Silver was pretty much a universally accepted currency so it didn't matter very much in which country a coin was minted.

Low-valued coins were probably less likely to circulate except locally as they weren't value dense enough to ship across the oceans in bulk. Thus "backwater" colonies like Ireland and Canada a couple hundred years ago probably had more acute shortages of small change, and were more likely to resort to local copper tokens. Some immigrants would bring a small amount of coins with them when moving overseas. In the old Chinese laborer camps in California one of my metal detecting friends has said you can sometimes find Qing Dynasty coppers and, if you are lucky, silver coins and ingots if you know where to look. (Of course, she wouldn't share where to look!)

As for world coins in coin shops now days, it seems to me that many of them were collected over a lifetime in the country of origin of an immigrant, brought overseas in recent times, and then sold to a coin shop directly or indirectly. A lot of world coins show up as collections at estate sales.

 

ebay

 

Many world coins come to the US when I return from a trip overseas.

 

Yeah, I'm a whitness

 

I was pondering the same recently regarding the great prevalence of WW2 era coins from Australia, Philippines and England in the USA now.

I bet alot of US servicemen kept souvenirs while stationed in those countries during that period.

That likely explains the abundance of WW1 era French coins I see all the time as well.

These are the ponderings that, I agree, help make this hobby fun.

 

There's a fairly simple answer.

A large percentage of Unc and high end AU coins were brought in by speculators or caused to be brought in by speculators or coin collectors. Very inexpensive foreign coins tend to end up in poundage where they become high end AU.

Most circulated coins were returned with tourists from overseas or by travelers. Indeed, you can make pretty good guesses when they came over by the amount of wear.

Every coin is unique and has a unique history caused by the unique individuals involved in its life and the unique motivations of these individuals.

 

Can you clarify what this means?

 

So many foreign coins had come to the United States brought back by service people that there were foreign coin buying guides printed.

My grandmother had this 1948 foreign coin buying price list:


S. Kellogg Stryker's Premium Catalog of Modern Foreign Coins - Cover

The book is now on the Newman Numismatic Portal of St. Louis, MO at the following link:

https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/538458

 

In this day and age coins or no longer limited to their country of origin.

 

Many world coins trade in bulk at prices between about $2.50 and $12 per pound. Some can even be higher or lower but most coins traded by weight are in a narrower range. Coins that trade by weight are called "poundage".

 

Yep. My father-in-law had some nice examples of Philippine coinage. They came back when his father returned from Pacific-theater service.

 

Agreed. I am speaking as both a Multi Branch US Battle Vet...and a Professional Recording Artist. Oh...AND OF COURSE...A happy Numanist

 

Most immigrants bring some of their native coins as a remembrance of where they came from - my parents had to flee Latvia and settled in Germany for a few years before arriving in New York in 1951 - they brought a handful of 5 lati silver coins, which I still have in my possession: