October 3rd 2011                                                                   

Next club meeting Monday 7th November 2011

  • The Numismatic History of Cyprus By Tim Everson

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

 

NOTICES

 

  • Anybody wishing to book places at the Coin Club Christmas Dinner on Saturday 26 November should get in touch with Peter, either by email or at the next Club meeting in November, so that he can fix the numbers. The venue is the Hatch Gate in Burghfield Common (RG30 3TH) and the cost, incl. wine, coffee/tea, is £25/ person.
  • Please start thinking about Short Talks for January, and auction lots for February!

 

October Meeting

 

Chris and Rachel Moore - Is This Money?!

 

Chris began his talk by explaining that he had been collecting properly for 2-3 years - but began a few years before that from an investment perspective, particularly on the gold front! Rachel collected as a child, and still has these coins although they have merged with Chris’ collection!

 

The first slide we were shown was a 1kg sheet-plate of copper… the question of the talk was asked - is this money?! In the current times, no - however dial the clock back to 1732 and add a couple of stamps, and the answer become yes - state-endorsed Riksdalers of Sweden which could weigh up to 20kg for a 10 Daler plate!

 

We then went back to a pre-money state and asked ‘What is barter?’. The dictionary would give you ‘The action or system of exchanging goods or services without using money.’

 

Ok, in that case, what is money?! This time we get ‘A medium that can be exchanged for goods and services and is used as a measure of their values on the market, including among its forms a commodity such as gold, an officially issued coin or note, or a deposit in a checking account or other readily liquefiable account.’

 

Right, so that’s settled! So on the following couple of slides we were shown a collection of objects and asked ‘Are these money?’ Examples of the object include:

 

Japanese 100 Mong - yes

Chinese Knife money - yes

Lundy 1 Puffin coin - no - rejected as legal coinage under Section 5 of the Coinage Act 1870 by the Petty Session court of Bideford in Devon on 5th March 1930, and subsequently by the High Court of Appeal on 31st January 1931

Thai bullet money - yes

Credit card - technically no - it is an access to money!

Co-op token - no

One troy ounce Silver - no

Cowrey shell - yes

Coin in the shape of Jaguar E-type - yes! It was a $1 coin of Somalia from 2010!

 

 

The next slide showed a ‘Nelson’ £5 coin, a bimetallic £2 coin, a Royal Bank of Scotland £1 note, a Bank of Ireland £5 note and a BoE Elgar £20 note. The question here was ‘Which of these are legal tender?’ You might expect that this would depend on where in the UK you are - however surprisingly, this is not the case - across the whole UK, the only two of these to be legal tender are the two coins! Under various legal technicalities, the RBS and BoI notes are not legal tender even in Scotland an Ireland respectively! The Elgar £20 has of course been demonetised and as such is no longer legal tender.

 

We were then shown a series of notes that were very short-lived for various reasons. These included the 200 Rial note of Iran which was originally issued showing 6-pointed stars - given this symbol’s Jewish connotations this proved very unpopular and was quickly replaced with a note of the same design but with 12-pointed stars! Iran also gave us the 500 Rial note which was issued showing the Shah just before the revolution - quickly reissued following the revolution with the Shah obliterated. In 1992 Russia had no less than three issues of its banknotes - firstly showing the Communist USSR hammer and sickle flag, the second without the flag, and finally the third with the new flag of the Russian Federation on the election of Boris Yeltsin.

 

Chris ended his talk with some examples of the world’s hyperinflation, which have given rise to some rather long numbers on notes - for example the 100,000,000,000,000 (one hundred trillion) dollar note of Zimbabwe in 2008 - the most zeros on a note or the 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 (one hundred quintillion) pengo note of Hungary in 1946 - the highest value note (the value was written in words rather than numbers). The inflation rate in Zimbabwe that gave rise to these notes was 89,700,000,000,000,000,000,000% (89.7 sextillion per cent) per annum - the cost of an item doubling every 24hrs!

 

Examples of every item above (except the Hungarian note) are held by the speaker, and were passed around the audience.

 

This was a very lively and interactive talk, and was greatly enjoyed by the twenty-seven members in attendance.

 

 

Future Events

  • Coins, Stamps and Collectables - Charing Cross Market, London – every Saturday!
  • Autumn Collectors Series – Spink, London – 9th-11th November
  • British and World Coins from the de Bruin Collection – DNW, London – 17th November
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Past Events

  • 1 years ago – “Coinage of the Knights of Malta” – Tony Holmes

·         10 years ago – “Early Tudor Coinage” – Joe Bispham

·         30 years ago – A joint meeting with the Reading Philatelic Society

 

                                                                                                                        Club Secretary