June 30th 2022.

Next club meeting Monday 4th July 2022.

·        Varieties in Milled coinage - Where to draw the line By Mick Martin

August 2022.

·         Summer Social – TBC - tour of numismatic sites in the City of London

September 2022.

·         Medallions Issued for the Bridges of London By David Young

 

Meetings are held at the Abbey Baptist Church, Abbey Square, commencing at 7.00 p.m.

 

Notices

The club has been informed of the death of Doug, our condolences go to his family. The funeral is to be held at Reading Crematorium.

 

June Meeting

 

This was the Annual General Meeting and Display Competition.

1)Apologies were received from Peter, Tony, Ian and Martin.

2)The 2021 AGM minutes were adopted, no matters arising.

3)There was only one point raised by the members concerning a further possible internet entry for the club. Will to investigate further and report back to the committee.

4)There were no points raised by the committee.

5)Gavin was re-elected President, proposed Michael, seconded Derek

The committee members were re-elected as a lot, Peter, John, Henry and Jawaid. Proposed Graham, seconded Michael.

Neil was re-elected as auditor, proposed Graham, seconded Alastair.

 

John congratulated the membership on having got through Covid and said how pleased he was that the club was getting back to normal. Graham proposed a vote of thanks to the committee for its actions in keeping the club going. Henry reminded us that its not long until the club’s Diamond Anniversary and we need to start thinking of suitable ways to celebrate the occasion.

 

Next season’s programme is almost complete, to date we have:

 

July                 Mick Martin                January          Short Talks

August            Summer Social            February        Neil Beaton

September      David Young              March             Auction

October          Kevin Clancy              April               TBA

November      Ros Farmer (TBC)      May                Michael Gouby

December       Xmas Party                 June                AGM and Display Competition

 

This completed the Annual General Meeting and we moved on to the Display Competition.

 

There were four displays plus one exhibit. First to describe their display was Will. Will collects by countries that he has visited. He attempts to collect a full set of coins for each of the countries he visits and finds this a good reminder of the various places he visited. In this way he gains an impression of the history of the country, especially if he goes back a few years later and finds the coinage has changed, then that leads him to work out why.

 

 

He organizes his collection by having a folder for each continent. For one half of his display he had brought along the folders for Africa and South and Central America for the second half he brought along some of the folders containing the coins he has bought at the club or elsewhere. Altogether an impressive mix of coins. Questioned about his storage method, Will revealed that he uses blu tak to keep the coins in place in his folders and that he hasn’t had any ill effects in over twenty years of collecting.

 

Next up we had Stuart who had brought some coins he had recently acquired in Poland. Each of the coins is in a type of photo frame with a connected picture behind the coin that Stuart took on the holiday. He recounted his trip to a coin dealer, who initially showed no interest in talking to him till he showed him pictures of some of his hammered collection. This prompted the man to return with a Celtic type half coin which had been found in Belgium, another coin came from Sopot near Gdansk, yet another was acquired at our coin auction, a three Polker of Sigismund. The last coin was a museum coin available for five Zloty from a machine. There was a strong maritime theme linking the coins and it turns out that a lot of Stuart’s ancestors have been involved in the trade.

 

After that we had Graham to give a talk on ‘Tactile’. A lot of graham’s collection is kept in folders or such but he has a drawer where he keeps ‘tactile’ coins. Some coins should be handled, for example Graham had a well worn hammered shilling and handling that gives one a sense of history, this is clearly not something that was made yesterday. You can speculate on how it came to have so much wear and how many hands it has passed through.

Graham also had some ‘canoe’ money, used in Siam and Thailand about 1850 and some Manilla or Oxpobo money from West Africa, which became known as slave bracelets since they were used to trade in slaves as well as other merchandise. They continued in use until 1948!

The last coin was a Piece of Eight, though the one Graham brought with him had been recovered from the sea, it is a classic part of what people regard as ‘treasure’, being silver. Allowing people to handle such coins would surely be good for the hobby as a whole, particularly if we start with children and lead to more coin collectors in the future.

 

Neil began his talk with a short presentation about a coin that had come in to his local church.

It is a one hryvnia from Ukraine, very topical.

 

Following this he talked about another topical topic, namely previous UK Jubilees. There haven’t been many over the years but Neil began with QueenVictoria’s Golden Jubilee, illustrated with commemorative pieces from Neil’s own collection with examples from Exeter, Plymouth and Reading. These were produced in their millions and many were distributed to children in the various towns. Some even had gold coloured crowns that allowed you to clip them on to your clothes and were made with a hole drilled in the top to allow them to be fastened. Local dignitaries were not above advertising themselves on the medals and one from Plymouth even quoted a Biblical text, Romans 13 – 1

 

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.

 

The next set were from Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. First off was the well known medal produced by the Royal Mint, with both old and new heads on either side, followed by further medals from Plymouth, Torquay and Windsor. Again some were produced by local businesses.

 

George V Silver Jubilee was illustrated with a National medal featuring King George and Queen Mary on the obverse and Windsor castle on the reverse and also a medal from Plymstock.

 

The final coin was a brand new Royal Mint 50p issued this year to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of our present Queen.

 

Following a very close vote, the Michael Broome cup for the Annual Display Competition was jointly awarded to Will and Neil. Well done to all the members who entered displays.

 

Future Events.

·         Midland Coin Fair – National Motorcycle Museum 10th July

 

Past Events

June has traditionally been the Annual General Meeting.

 

Club Secretary.