Primarily a Stamp Collector, I have recently tried to find the British and Irish coins that I would have in my pockets in the pre-decimal age to 1971. The British 3d piece of GVI and QE2 are totemic. Not only did they look different to other coins but they bought so many comics, sweets etc ...a very standard coin for schoolkids. I never saw a GV 3d (silver) in circulation....we only saw "gold" (as we called them) 3d coins. I had always assumed there was a total change from silver to "gold" in the 1930s....so I was very surprised to see "silver" 3ds (GVI) from 1940s in a bargain bucket on a market stall yesterday. Seemingly they circulated side by side. I bought some for curiousity. The Dealer said that the "silver" 3ds from this era were mostly sent abroad to colonies. Is this the case?
The Dealer said that the "silver" 3ds from this era were mostly sent abroad to colonies. Is this the case? Yes it is, they are quite common to find in the UK though. The ones to keep an eye out for are Brass 1946 & 1949 Silver 1942, 43, 44. The 1945 silver is extremely rare.
Thanks for this Davey. I checked the dates. I have around 30 different 3d coins from the two reigns, ...no rare dates. Basically For me...Coins are secondary but interesting.
the nickel-brass were not minted until 1937 so I think that the silver must have circulated in britain
Yes they did, from 1670 to 1945, but the ones from the 40`s namely 1942/43/44/45 were issued for colonial use only.
I was getting silver 3d bits from shop tills in the early 1950s. I collected farthings because shopkeepers tended to leave them in a drawer in the tills instead of banking them, they'd only get a few even if they were drapers, so they'd swap them for pennies if asked politely, and I have a bit in reserve because along with the farthings they'd quite often have a silver 3d or even several. These they'd be happy to pass on as well. Occasionally I'd get the odd foreign coin as a gift, or for whatever they had mistaken it for, usually a French 10 centimes. This was pretty much the same as a penny. I could easily get as many farthings and silver 3d as my pocket money allowed, which I'd take home for completing sets or improving grades. The rejects went back for more material. They are not the same ones, but I have a bag of several hundred silver 3d right behind me as I write. The most I ever had at once was a dimple Haig whisky bottle full. Must have been about 4000 of them. The neck was stopped off with a twist of 20 year old newspaper, so this must have been someone's hoard accumulated over years, and I found many of the rarer ones, enough to sell the second best and just keep a year set back to mid Victoria. I was never a fan of the brass ones as anything special, but a thousand or so have accumulated in the boxes in the shed.
I understood that it was a the other way around - that the brass 3d were unpopular so they continued to mint the silver for a further 4 years. Anyhow it tickles me that the same value coin continued to be produced in two variants. Sorry about the cutting out of the brass!
