July
30th. 2020.
Upcoming club
meetings:
Monday 3rd August 8pm.
·
Subject - This will be another Zoom
meeting, open to all members. We hope to include at least one short talk
courtesy of Peter in the 40 minutes available as well as bringing members up to
date with any developments.
Messages from the Internet
I am increasingly getting requests from people who have been clearing out
their house in the lockdown and finding boxes of coins and desperate to know if
they have anything rare in them.
June Meeting
The electronic Zoom meeting was attended by thirteen members. It began
by wishing Happy Birthday to one of our members, Graham. John then canvassed
opinion on how soon the club should consider reopening, with ten of the members
happy for it to open as soon as possible. This is actually not possible at the moment but the Abbey Baptist Church is gradually coming back
to life and it might be possible to meet in October. I would once again ask the
rest of the membership to let me know when they would feel safe coming back to
the club as I had a very disappointing response to my previous e-mail on the
subject.
A second possibility is to have a strictly socially distanced Summer
Social, meeting in a public place where we could all bring our own picnics or
go for a walk. It remains debatable at the moment as to whether this is
actually legal but again Id like to canvas opinion on
the matter, please let me know what you think.
The November meeting will take place on the 9th November if we
are back in Reading, since the Church will be in use
for a wedding on the 2nd. If the meeting is electronic it will probably
stay on the 2nd.
Having brought everyone up to date, we were then treated to a short talk
by Michael.
Following a recent discovery by Michael he now believes that the Royal
Mint was considering changing the punctuation on coins in 1816. Evidence for
this came from two 1816 sixpences, one which had a mixture of diamond and
square shaped stops and another which was vice-versa instead of the usual
circular stops on the obverse.
Michael wondered if these two dies were possibly Trial dies, other sorts
of stops having been used in the past (cf. during the reign of Henry VI). In the
event the traditional circular stops were obviously considered superior.
Michael then followed on to an 1820 sixpence with an inverted 1 in the
date
He has been sorting out his groats and came across an 1840 groat which had repairs to three of the letters in Pence
but not to the first E which was missing its middle bar completely an 1841 groat with a 1 at the start of the date and a Roman I
at the end of the date an 1842groat where the 2 has been struck over a 1 and an
1848 groat with G over sideways G.
He finished by detailing some of the new penny varieties he has found.
Firstly an 1860 where the I in Britt appears to have been overstruck with a T
to give BRTTT. Next there was an 1861 with the N of ONE overstruck on an
inverted N, then a VIGTORIA error. Michael thought that this latter error may
have been made by the repairer, working in reverse, since the G of REG is where
the C of Victoria would have been on the die itself, the image being reversed.
After that we had a spectacularly misaligned repair to an 1880 penny,
almost making it an 18880 penny.
Many thanks to Michael for a well prepared and interesting talk.
Georgian
Bank of England Tokens
Part 2 1804 - 1816
With
the withdrawal of the 1797 issue of bank tokens once again people were calling
for small denomination regal silver coins. But then things began to improve.
Nelsons 1798 victory at the Nile and the prospect of Peace produced a calming
effect on the markets. With Government war spending reduced and the price of
silver falling several London Bankers sent silver to the Mint for coining. For
some inexplicable reason the Privy Council banned
their issue, although they had no legal right to do so unless mandated by
Parliament. The very rare Dorrien
& Magens is the only survivor from this time.
By
1803 the Peace was over and prices of all
commodities were rising rapidly and once again there was now much concern at
the lack of silver coin. The Government bereft of ideas & leadership passed
the buck to others to decide. They did however hint at another issue of
countermarked 8 Reales, this time using a more
prominent mark. Thus in January 1804 the Treasury
warranted the Mint to over strike 8 Reales with a
stamp of the portrait of George 3rd as per the silver penny. But as
8 Reales were in short supply only 266,000
countermarked pieces were issued , this time at a
value of 5/- and known as dollars. Easy comparison with the penny was seen as giving greater protection against forgery.
Almost
immediately Mr Forger got to work. The Banks problem was with the stamp. The
portrait of the silver penny is so shallow that most marks are indistinct and
lack fine detail. The examples of silver pennies below illustrate the point, (note
the difference in quality of these higher grade
specimens).
This
played into the hands of the forgers as the difference between genuine and fake
marks is often minimal. Even today expert opinions often differ as to what is genuine
and what is not.
The
marks on the first 2 coins are clearly fake as the head shape is wrong, although
the first is on a good 8 Reales. The 3rd
coin dated 1806 is a later concoction as genuine pieces were withdrawn in 1804.
The 4th specimen illustrates the dilemma. Purchased as a forgery it
could be a genuine but poorly applied mark.
Because
of what happened next these Octagonal dollars had a very
short life, as explained in part 3. The Bank gave notice that redemption
would officially closed in September 1804, a little
over 6 months since first issued. That the bank was not seen to be profiteering
the genuine dollars with false marks were, by arrangement, purchased for 4/8d
by another bank, namely Binns & Wood. What the
public did not know was the Bank of England then purchased them for 4/8½d.
Part
3 will tell the tale of what happened next
And Now the Answers to Michaels Quiz
1 4 S = 1 D
..4
Sestertius = 1 Denarius (After 211 BC)
2 2 R = 1 S
2 Ryals
(10s.) = 1 Sovereign (1485-1554)
3 96 HF = 1S
..96
Half Farthings(2x4x12) = 1 Shilling
4 1 G = 21 S
1 Guinea = 21 Shillings
(After 1717 George 1)
5 40 S = 1 P
40 Sixpences = 1 Pound
6 240 HP = 10 S
.240 Half pennies = 10
Shillings
7 120 G = 2 P
.120 groats (120x4) = 2
Pounds (480 p)
8 3 A = 1 S
3 Angels (6s. 8d) = 1
Sovereign (20s) (1485-1554)
9 25 D = 1 A
25 Denarius = 1 Aureus
(After 27 Bc)
10 16 QF = 1 P
16 Quarter Farthings = 1 Penny
11 Grand
...£1000
12 Monkey
.£500
13 Pony
..£25
14 Score
£20
15 Ton
£100
16 Half a bar
.10 Shilling or 50
pence
17 Lady Godiva
..£5
(Fiver)
18 Mother Hen
£10 (ten)
19 Squid
£1 (quid)
20 Niffty
£50
(fifty)
21 Bag of sand
£1000 (grand)
22 Dirty
.£30
(thirty)
23 Bobby Moore
.£20
(score)
24 Elsie
..6
pence (Tanner Coronation Street)
25 Bullseye
.£50
(Centre of the dart board)
Past Events
·
20 years ago "Soho's
Anti-forgery Experiments" by Mick Martin
·
40 years ago - "A Roman
Hoard" by Barry Greenaway
Club Secretary.