TWO international surprise packages yesterday! Wanna see what was in 'em? ;-)

I am presently expecting only one international coin shipment, which is coming from San Marino.

So I was a bit surprised to get two international packages yesterday: one from Thailand and the other from Canada, neither of which were anything I had ordered.



Uh-oh- Ladymarcovan calleth me from the kitchen, so I must leave this draft message and resume later, when I have the rest of the pictures uploaded...

 

Yeah, but my pix were truly stinky so I wanna try again before I upload. No time to do that now, so I'll attempt that when I'm at work in the wee hours of the morning.

 

Here goes, stinky pix and all. Never was able to reshoot.

The Thai package is from Ed M.- our very own @coin_nut. He had offhandedly mentioned he was sending me a "cheer up" package when he saw I was selling off a big chunk of my better stuff a few weeks ago, to pay some bills.

Truth is, the very act of paying off those bills cheered me up considerably. Sure, I'll miss the coins I sold, but it was the right thing to do.

Anyhoo...



It's a whole bunch of stuff.



I see a New Zealand "kiwi" florin (.500 silver, I believe). Haven't had one in a while. Fun little coins. And a 1929 Argentine 5-centavo piece. Love the Liberty heads on these.





There's a pretty good little Roman AE3 in here- looks like the emperor Probus.





And a nice looking British large penny of George VI. Looks RB UNC, or nice Choice AU at the least. I think it's a 1937. I took a reverse picture but it was unusable.


The rest of the pics in this series were unusable: too dark or too blurry, or both. I was not working under optimal conditions. And it's kinda hard to photograph the coins while they're still in the little baggies. Might make a go of properly shooting individual pics later.

But anyway, it's a fun little lot, and was super sweet of Ed to think of me and send me a little bit of cheer.

@Mkman123 - there's a modern Thai bimetallic in there. I'll look and see what it is. Send it your way if you like.

 

OK, now the second international surprise package... this one from Canada.

I have not done business with George Anderson. (Joel Anderson, yes, who also uses a Chinese cash coin logo- but that was back in the olden days, and I digress.) The envelope with colorful Canadian stamps and the Chinese cash coin logo were eye-catching, and I knew immediately this was a coin package, but since I did not order it, I had no idea what it was!




The letter inside proved revealing. This one was also Ed's work!




Inside was a beautiful proof Canadian Sesquicentennial medal.

I'll have to read up on these. Never seen one. Love the obverse.

So many thanks to @coin_nut for the kind and unexpected gesture(-s)!

Definitely provided some good cheer.

Thanks, Ed!

 

It appears the Royal Canadian Numismatic Association provided a number of regional clubs with dies that had that maple leaf logo, to strike these RCNA Canada 150 medals. So I guess maybe that side is the obverse- the common design all of the medals featured, sort of the way various countries' Euro coins share a common design on one side. The clubs then produced their own (reverse?) die. This one is apparently from Vancouver, as we can see, and their design is obviously a throwback to some 19th century Victorian design, which with I was previously unfamiliar- but I like it!

 

Found another one on eBay, which gives me the information that this was from the Victoria Numismatic Society in British Columbia (I was going by the "Vancouver" in the legend). Seems the mintage was only 100 pieces, and only 50 of those were distributed as singles. Neat!

Seller says:

 

I've heard of those gardens.

Never been to Canada myself, but my sister went to boarding school in BC (Shawnigan Lake).

Never been to the Pacific NW in general, but I know I'd like it. I love cool, foggy places with lots of trees.