Okay, I'll give it a go. One Shire silver penny to the person who can name the ponies that were stolen from the travellers at Bree. Background: This is related to THE LORD OF THE RINGS by professor J.R.R. Tolkien. This was the fictional coin that inspired me to get into coinmaking in the first place! In the story, the traveller's ponies are stolen while they are staying the night in Bree, and they are forced the next day to purchase a pony for the outrageous sum of twelve silver pennies to carry the baggage for their continued journey. I was initially shocked that twelve silver pennies would seem like a lot for a pony... and so began to research the cost of livestock and the value of silver coins in medieval times. Eventually I produced this coin in collaboration with master engraver Greg-Franck-Weiby. About the coin: It is dated 1402 (by the Shire Reckoning) and bears inscriptions in the Tengwar mode and the Kuduk tongue. It weighs about 6.2 grams of 90% coin silver and is about 23mm (15/16") in diameter. It is in VF or better heavily-circulated condition and shows some original cracking of the silver at the edge due to the great force of striking. The Oak tree on obverse (the first thing to wear away in circulation) is clearly visible. Though I have made a hundred or more other coin designs, because of its link to the story this one is considered by many to be the ultra-classic issue from Shire Post. An image of it appears on the cover of the 4th edition of Unusual World Coins where it is listed as X#23 on page 339. So there it is! Please send the answers to me by private message to avoid giving clues to others. I will post the answers and the reference for them once the contest is over. One silver penny to the first person who sends me a private message with the correct list of names of the ponies that were stolen at Bree. Hint: Watching the Peter Jackson film will NOT help you, as this is one of the episodes that he left out of the screenplay! Winner to provide a mailing address so I can send your coin. Good luck!
Contest winner: Hepcat57! "Does it guess easy? It must have a competition with us, my preciouss! If precious asks, and it doesn't answer, we eats it, my preciousss. If it asks us, and we doesn't answer, then we does what it wants, eh? We shows it the way out, yes!" Okay... I guess that was pretty easy. While I was out for lunch there were five answers, three of which were correct. Moen1305, Drusus, and Hepcat57 all got the correct answer and named all five ponies: Sharp-ears, Wise-nose, Swish-tail, Bumpkin, and White-socks. But of the three, hepcat57 answered soonest and so wins the game! The reference is from Chapter 8 of FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING. Tom Bombadil gives the ponies their names, which they answer to thereafter for the rest of their lives. Tom is calling them and shouts: "Hey! now! Come hoy now! Whither do you wander? Up, down, near or far, here, there or yonder? Sharp-ears, Wise-nose, Swish-tail and Bumpkin, White-socks my little lad, and old Fatty Lumpkin!" ... but of course Fatty Lumpkin is Tom's pony, and did not travel further with them and so was not stolen from the inn at Bree. Hmm... I see I'll have to work on it to come up with something suficently obscure to challenge this crowd. Congratulations Hepcat! I'll contact you off-forum to make arrangements for delivery of your winnings. "Good-bye! Be good, take care of yourselves-and DON'T LEAVE THE PATH!" Tom
Rim cracks Not a silly question at all! Those are actual cracks showing that the silver has been pushed slightly beyond the limits to cold work for this alloy. Most of the coins have those cracks, and they are all different, so the pattern of cracks is diagnostic for each individual coin. To make these, I weigh out about 6.5 grammes of silver shot or clippings on a digital scale, then smelt them with a prop-oxy torch in a niobium crucible. I actually use sterling clippings for most of it, but I mix in bits of scrap jewelery so I say that they're coin-silver just to take care of the fact that they might assay slightly below 92.5%. When the metal has melted thoroughly and is rolling easily in the crucible it's poured into a little round mold in an alumina block to harden and cool. It is now a little round lump or "button" of silver. A four-stage process then smashes that button out into a more-or-less round blank shape and cleans up the oxide skin. The spreading force tends to elicit tensile forces in the very edge, which results in these splits and cracks. They do not run deep, seldom much beyond the rim. Since I started making coins I've learned more modern techniques of blankforming (rolling out sheet and punching blanks) but I get the most comment about this earlier style, BECAUSE it shows the cracked edge, and many people like that a great deal. This is one of the lessons I have to learn over and over... being a perfectionist can be a problem. If I was to modernize my methods and equipment... I could put out product that is nearly as perfect as the large mints. But why? They are already doing that. By sticking with ancient techniques I can create the same look that ancient coins have, which has a deep and visceral appeal. The circulation process is proprietary... it's taken a great deal of experimentation to figure out how to approximate the look and feel of a heavily used coin. But I will say that it does involve the use of a rock-tumbler with various chemicals and media. So... I guess I'd say that the cracks are not DELIBERATE so much as they are simply a feature of the method of blank-forming I use. But I LIKE them, and I'm not trying to eliminate them.
more contests This is kinda fun, there will be more chances... but I have to think of harder questions that cannot just be googled up... which is getting tough these days as almost everything is on the web somewhere or other!
Silver Penny Mailed I've mailed out the silver penny... the actual same one in the photograh... to the winner Hepcat. I hope he'll let us know when it's received!
