Next club meeting - Monday 7^th December 2009.

• Subject - Winter bourse & Members Evening

The activities will be as follows

1. Please can members bring to the December meeting your most prized acquisition and/or biggest disappointment from the past year, as a discussion piece.
2. Please can we have some volunteers for the Short Talks meeting in January. A 5-10 minute talk on anything vaguely numismatic-related, would be most appreciated.

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

The November meeting of Reading Coin Club was a talk given by Tim Everson on Communion Tokens, and was attended by 19 members.

Tim began his talk by explaining the concept of a communion token. These originated in the Reformation in 1535, and were purchased by the populace of the parish to enable them to attend the Easter Day Holy Communion (this would be the only time in the year that communion was taken). The 1/4d fee went towards covering the cost of the communion feast. However, this minister was able to refuse people a communion token for ‘unbecoming behaviour’. As such, those people would be refused entry to the church on Easter Day, and be unable to take communion.

It is estimated that there are 7500 different communion token in existence, of which 5500 originated in Scottish parishes. It is also documented that paper tokens were used, however none of these remain to this day.

The tokens were mainly lead or iron, and occasionally brass, and could be round, square, rectangular, oval or even octagonal. In the early years, they were mostly cast, and sometimes punched, by the church’s local blacksmith. Later, they were bought from specialist companies with coining presses.

The tokens also had a variety of obverse (and later, reverse) designs, from a simple Christian cross (punched on a square of sheet steel for Campbelltown Church), to the date and parish (for example 1737 Clachan, or Lismore and Ackley 1806 JS; the JS representing Minister John Stewart). There are also a few varieties of the same design, for instance, the 1823 Campbelltown Parish token was originally issued in 1823 with the 3 having a rounded top. A later re-issue of this token (late-Victorian) was also dated 1823, but the 3 has a flat top.

In 1843, the Great Disruption caused a schism in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and around 450 ministers broke away to form the Free Church of Scotland. This lead to further splits, and as such, with more than one church for each village/town, we have instances of several different communion tokens for one place. An example of this would be Rothesay.

The latest dated token that the speaker knew of was a 1907 token for Strath-on-Skye, however it is possible that tokens were made right up until the 1950’s and 60’s. Some of these later tokens had much more intricate designs including images of the church, sunrise over the church or the burning bush (Exodus 3:2).

Tim concluded his talk by giving us two further reading options, the first being an article in Coin News (January 2008), and the second being ‘Communion Tokens of the World’ by Leicester M Burzinski.

As usual, we thank Tim for an informative and interesting talk, and we thank him for joining us

Annual Subscriptions

Will the few persons yet to pay their club subscriptions please do so at the next club meeting.

• DNW - Paper Money and British and World Coins Auction – 9^th December
• East Grinstead Fair - Coins, Stamps, Medals, Post Cards and Books - 12^th December
• Bonhams – Medals, Bonds, Banknotes and Coins Auctions – 16^th December
• Monks Coin fair, Jury's hotel Great Russell St – 2^nd January
• Croydon Coins – 5^th January

1 Year ago - Tony Travis gave a talk about the Siege Pieces of Charles I

10 Years ago - Peter Preston-Morley presented a talk on the East India Company Portcullis coinage of 1600/1

30 Years ago - The Club Auction took place earning a the club a commission of £18.79