Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Tom Maringer, post: 178535, member: 7033&quot;]Yes, a whole &#039;nother realm indeed! The Zamunda piece is a great fantasy based on film fiction. It would have been nice for the collector for the mintages to be known and published, but even so, since it&#039;s obvious that only one &quot;Continental&quot; die-set exists there are likely to be less than 5,000. With small-shop handmade fantasy coins the mintages are often VERY low, sometimes less than 100 pieces. Die clashes, die breaks, and other errors tend to be very common. Off-weight or off-metal strikes are not at all unusual... including sometimes bizarre rare metals, and you often have the opportunity to correspond directly with the maker of the piece. You can sometimes get completely unique custom strikes... and the prices are generally quite reasonable. </p><p><br /></p><p>The entire field of custom coining is currently experiencing a resurgence. It was very common and popular a hundred years ago or so, when every town had a die-sinker and good-for tokens were in every pocket. It fell out of favour as radio and then television advertising became the medium of choice, and the small press-works shops fell by the wayside. The curent resurgence is (I believe) due in part to the fact that the major shops have all gone to computer-controlled die-cutting and automatic presses. All that perfectly good hundred-year-old equipment and tooling is hitting the junkyards for barely more than scrap value because nobody wants to break a sweat anymore. A cadre of mostly young craftspeople are working to preserve the old techniques of true hand-cut dies before the computer wipes out any knowledge of how to actually work with metal. And a small but enthusiastic cadre of numismatists is actively following these devlopments in the field by purchasing examples. The active moneyers of the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) are in the forefront of this neo-numismatic movement, creating true circulating coinage for their fantasy realms that is actually used in exchange for goods and services. Unusual World Coins has only barely begun to catalogue those issues, but the editors are currently working on it. The next (5th) edition should be be very interesting![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in