A few nights ago I was watching the history channel and noticed some guy dressed up and whacking the heck out of silver planchets making "Long Cross" english coins. He had hundreds of them he'd made and apparently they were souvenirs for the tourists at some castle in England. Anyone else recall seeing this of hearing about it? B
A friend of mine told me he had seen it as well but I missed it, hopefuly they will repeat it soon De Orc
Yes, it was really good, but all those NEW "Long Cross" coins really scared me. What if in a few years they start turning up as originals??? They went on to say they had been recalled by the king (One of the Henrys I think) and were to have been melted. B
I would assume (I hope) that they include the word copy on them somewhere :whistle: LOL De Orc :whistle:
Ouite well He is not realy my type of poet but he is very popular, the Mrs likes his work but there again she also likes Wordsworth LOL we read his stuff at school, have to ask why LOL even though I wont read your reply for a couple of days of to the coast :thumb: De Orc
Never saw it, but I can go one better. I've got one of the coins somewhere which i'll try to dig out over the weekend. A contact I have in NZ was over here a few years back and bought one from a guy who had set up his pitch just outside the Tower of London and who was making the coins on the spot. Interestingly, their used to be a mint at the Tower! More interestingly, if the guy had tried to do that back in the mediaeval days he would have ended up being a resident IN the Tower while awaiting his execution. Anyway, my contact told me about his purchase and we ended up doing a swap. Can't remember what I gave in exchange now but I ended up with a coin and a leaflet explaining the techniques used. Ian
Well that'd be a first if they did! A question no one ever answers when i ask it. What is the British legal position on copy coins? US law requires all reproductions to be marked 'COPY'. Does the UK even have a law on this? I've seen many repros of medieval coins stuck in sterling silver to the same designs as the originals, the only difference being a slight alteration to the legends.
Bone, I saw the program you're talking about.It was a documentary on the Tower of London and the crown jewels.One thing I found interesting was that he used two dies,the top one of which had a collar that fit over the bottom die,preventing misaligned strikes.Now I wonder how off centered ones ever occured.Did the planchet slip to one side during the strike or what? I also noticed that he would throw them back into the melting pot shortly after striking them and start all over again so maybe it was just a demonstration of the process and not the manufacture of replicas for sale.
Finally got round to digging out that `moneyer' piece I got hold of. It's supposed to be an Aethelred II (978-1016) long cross type spink 1151. IMHO there's not much to worry about in terms of mistaking it for the real thing, but it is interesting in that it was made by the same methods as the real McCoy of the time.
Very interesting. Yes, the chances of it being mistaken for an original are indeed slim. What is it made of, Silver? Thanks for showing B
To be honest I don't really know. It doesn't gel with me as being silver but I wouldn't swear that it wasn't. I couldn't remember what i did with the leaflet that accompanied the coin. As usual I put it away somewhere `safe'. I'm still looking for that safe place. Ian
Most repros of British hammered coinage are pewter.The guy on history channel,however,was using real silver I think.
That one certainly isn't pewter. It might very well be silver or have a silver content. Definitely struck as opposed to cast. Pewter replicas i've seen are cast. However, i'm wondering if the metal is not perhaps softer than silver. The flan is thin like the real thing and perhaps just a little too well struck up. Hopefully when i find the leaflet all will be revealed. :eating: I also have a couple of modern made items minted by a guy in Canada using ancient moneying techniques. He used the silver from coins he melted specially for the exercise. I'll check it against those for colour, surface etcetera and report back.
OK.....found the leaflet, which is quite informative concerning how coinage was made way back then. It unfortunately tells me nothing about the coin in hand though. I weighed the piece, and it comes in at 1.8 gms. It's very thin and looking at it again, it looks more silver than it does anything else. That's about as much as i can tell without practising some alchemy on it. Here's an example from the guy in Canada I mentioned. He produced dies, and flans and hand struck a small number of these for participants in the newsgroup forum rec.collecting.coins. It's crude, but i think it's also pretty neat given that I can appreciate exactly how much work went into making it, from melting down old silver to create the flans with / making dies/ and striking the coins (a very dangerous activity by all accounts). These pieces were 92.5% silver and weighed in at 4.5 grams (+/- 5 per cent).
