Just started myself on another collecting tangent - Canadian provinces. The mintages are ridiculously low, its a joke. For example, I just got an 1873 Newfoundland 50 cents, the mintage is only 32,000!!!! Aiden, any advice on key dates in the series to watch out for?
Since Aiden can't help you now I'll try to contribute something. I don't collect these coins myself but I will give you some that show high values in CCN trends. It seems values are fairly high before 1900 and drop off quite sharply after that. Some notable ones are 10¢ 1870,1885 5¢ 1873H,1876H,1885,1946 1¢ 1880 Oval 0 Bill
First Get a PEI penny. As it's the only coin from that dominion, it's the "key" in the series. All silver new Brunswick coins are rare, and most 19th century newfieland. Of course there are the British Columbia coins, which are certianly COULD be considered keys because they're so bloody rare. Then there's the two San Pierre Malequine coins, which, even though they're not British Empire/precanadian, shouild be in there as SP/M is completey surrounded by Canadian waters. (a couple of miles off newfld.
Aiden's gotten banned from quite a few Internet forums/communities. I wish I had his address, so I could send him some cute medal-coins for his birthday. Look at his profile and the rancid views he holds on homosexuality: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=92276150&blogID=143159243
Canadian coins seem to be bargains compared to their US counterparts. You may also want to collect a few cent and half cent tokens. They predate the Canadian national coinage and are quite inexpensive. A [former?] forum member, Mike Marotta, brought them to my attention with an internet article he wrote.
I have collected some Canadian tokens and am interested to see the internet article you are talking about. Is it possible for you to share the URL with us? Thanks. Regards, Ballabh Garg