The kids are back in school, which means I can take a day off to go back to my LCS again. I had a good visit, picking up a lot of great stuff, some of which I will show in coming days. Here are some new additions from the UK and related areas. I got great deals on these and most of these are totally new to me. What I didn't notice until I did the photos was the crack in the John Howard farthing Conder token and the initials someone stamped on the neck of the king on the 1817 shilling. Oh well.
Great pick ups. the Isle of Man is often found well worn as it was a curiosity. The William III is extra nice as it has the extra letter so 9 letters in the forename instead pf 8 so GVLIELMVS instead of the usual GVLIEMUS The engraver was John Rottier or his son James whose family had strong Jacobite (Catholic) links and he was dismissed in 1697 when a mint enquiry found him guilty of smuggling dies out of the London Tower Mint of Charles II and James II to France. In 1688 John had a muscular disease in his hands which made engraving difficult so the sons Norbert and James were appointed as engravers to assist to "keep the salary" in the family.
You are welcome @Hiddendragon , thanks for sharing such great coins. When I get a bit of time I will see if you have any other variants amongst these. Plenty of history around all of them.
I too love that Anne shilling dated J7JJ. The initials on the bust of the George III "bullhead" make that coin a love token, I reckon.
I reckon it is a merchant stamp because it is made with an engineered punch and normally love tokens would be engraved with some flourish to show effort and endearment. Some traders would do this once silver is proved as there were a lot of forgeries after the great recoinage. If I was his loved one ( presuming he was a man). I would wonder how many stamps he had and was he in mass production! For the benefit of @Hiddendragon , I'm 90% certain that this is another scarce variety you have picked up which features an unbarred "H" in the HONI on the reverse. 40 years ago I specialised in George III shillings and I had a full run of them including patterns but a life event resulted in the loss of them all. Had I been able to hold on to some of them such as the Dorrien & Magens pattern, that would have been a better life changing event! It's great to see such coins surfacing which have clearly been cherished by collectors over hundreds of years and not melted down.
