MAY NEWSLETTER

Next meeting: Monday 3^rd June 2013 : Annual General Meeting & Display Competition. Meetings are held at the Abbey Baptist Church, Abbey Square, Reading, commencing at 8.00 pm, doors open at 7pm.

NOTICES:

• While the AGM is where the Committee officers report the status of the club & initiatives it is also where the membership voice their opinions, concerns and ideas for the future. The committee welcomes/ needs direction from the membership and it is beholden on all members to contribute to the club and not just the committee.

• As of now (mid May) we have only received 1 nomination for the committee, namely Neil. As 3 existing officers ( James, Peter & Henry) have agreed to offer themselves for re-election this means we are 1 person short for a full committee. In our 50^th year we need a full committee so someone please volunteer.

• Remember the next meeting is also the competition for displays so please try and bring one along.

• To date 8 persons have signed up for the Summer Social visit to the Ashmolean in Oxford. (Tuesday 13^th August starting at 11.00am). It will be a guided tour of the new money gallery + a handling session of coins requested by members. With 15 places there is still time to indicate interest in attending by signing up at the June meeting or just phone the secretary. Members to make their own travels arrangements, either singly or in groups.

On the Saturday the 4^th of May fifteen members and guests enjoyed an evening of skittles. As usual the balls often went off beam causing much anguish to the bowler. It was also quite remarkable how often one threaded a ball through the entire group of nine pins without a single hit. We had 2 games of highest score. In the first the women beat the men by just two points with Jean being the champion. However, in the second justice was achieved with victory for the men by a considerable margin and Henry being the overall winner. In between these games we played a round of ‘killer’ where the requirement is to fell one or more pins. Sounds easy until one realizes the nine pins are reset when all nine have been felled. Thus as the game progresses for some there is very little to aim at. The winner was Jean. Following a break for the very pleasant buffet we concluded with another variation of ‘killer’ where one has to knock down just one pin. Once again the pins are only reset when all nine have been floored. The winner was new member Richard Macgregor.

Thanks go to Peter for making the arrangements for a really good value for money evening.

May Meeting: This month we had 29 attendees to hear a new speaker to Reading. Mr Gary Oddie delivered a well illustrated and humorous talk on’ Some rarities of the shilling series’.

Gary began by posing the question as to what constitutes ‘rarity’. It may be ‘not many made’, ‘not many exist’, ‘demand greatly exceeds supply’ or ‘a new discovery’. An alternative view is that rarity is something you have to wait a long time for. He then told us about his early days of collecting, where like many of us, the prices of coins were well our means and owning such coins was a pipe dream.

Coming to the coins themselves Gary first focused on the Testoons of Henry 7^th. He spoke about the various varieties, the copies & forgeries and the various engravers who operated at several locations. Gary then spoke at length about the way he had tracked the provenances of these rare pieces and how the various die links had been established. Moving on we saw pictures of the very rare shillings of Edward 6^th countermarked with either a portcullis or greyhound. Interestingly we were shown an ‘Emery’ copy with an incorrect portcullis countermark adorned with chains, (ie, similar to the Portcullis money of Elizabeth 1^st). Clearly Mr Emery had not seen an original which has no chains. Next Gary covered the ‘Dorriens & Magens’ shilling and the known provenances, the 1850 1/- and some fine counterfeits shillings of Charles 1^st. These were followed by some examples of very rare 1/- banknotes and some unusual postal orders for which Gary gave some interesting historical background. We then heard about the 1/- slavery token of the Marquis of Sligo who was a prominent slavery reformer, the 1928 Irish pattern 1/- including that of Mr Morbiducci and the excessively rare 1/- paper ticket for the internment camp in Daresalam.

To conclude Gary illustrated a 2002 5p in gold, a possible future rarity.

Our thanks go to Gary for an excellent talk, full of interesting anecdotes, and for bringing along some examples of very rare shillings.

Upcoming Events

There are lots of auctions & fairs in the next month, details of which are in the press.

• 22^nd May - Spink Auction ( Ancient & World Coins), Bloomsbury, London.
• 31^st May – Baldwin Auction, (Indian coins), Adelphi Terrace, London.
• 2^nd June - London Coin Fair + Argentum Auction, Holiday Inn, London Bloomsbury.
• 2^nd / 3^rd June – London Coins Auction, Grange hotel, Bracknell
• 4^th June – Croydon coin auction, UR church hall, Addiscombe Grove, Croydon
• 4^th June – Wessex Coin club Auction, Beaufort Rd, Southbourne, Bournemouth
• 5^th June – Morton & Eden Coin Auction, London
• 9^th June – Midland Coin Fair, Motor Cycle Museum, near NEC.
• 12^th /13^th June – DNW auction (British & World), Washington hotel, Curzon St, London
• 19^th June – Warwick and Warwick Auction, Lord Leycester Hotel, Warwick.

REPORTS for AGM

CHAIRMAN (James) – to be given at AGM

TREASURER (Peter)

The Income and Expenditure Account and Balance Sheet for the period ended 30 April 2013 is attached below.

The year has been successful with the Club achieving a surplus of £83.55 (last year, £0.67). The surplus has been added to the revenue reserve which now stands at £2,808.03.

However, there have been some important trends. Three years ago (2010-11) subscriptions provided 76% of the Club’s income. This past year it has been down to 56%. The reason we have been able to hold subscriptions to £14/ year is that other sources of income have risen substantially. These sources are auction commission and donations, which last year totalled £377.38.

Meanwhile although the room hire rises every year the committee have taken steps to control expenditure which, at £899.73 overall, is less than last year.

CLUB SECRETARY (Mick)

The current membership is 40, a reduction of 1 from last year. We have lost 7 members but gained 4 and 2 past members have rejoined. We also have 2 recent attendees who will formally join as a new member when the next season begins. Each year we now seem to report a small decline in membership, hence the need to keep pushing the publicity (as noted in the publicity report).

Nearly 80% of the membership now receives the newsletter by email which saves the club over £250 per year. To make the newsletter more interesting per the request last year numismatic articles have been added. While the first few articles have been written by the secretary, members also need to provide articles for this initiate to continue.

PROGRAMME SECRETARY ( Henry)

It has been a relatively good year despite a few hic cups. We had 2 speakers unable to attend, but club members G Kirby & M Martin stepped in at short notice. The standard of the talks covering coins, banknotes, para-numismatics and antiquities has been good. Meetings have been very well attended with over 25 attendees, and sometimes nearer 30. This level of attendance is well above what most other clubs achieve.

There has been minimal response to the last AGM request for the membership to provide ideas for speakers. The secretary asks again if any member is willing to do a talk or has an idea for a speaker, please see me on club nights. As reported last years report it continues to be problematic to obtain speakers who talk about main stream English coins, whereas we are ok for talks on other aspects (eg tokens, colonials, banknotes, medals). While the costs for speakers are now much more than in days of old they seem to have levelled out – they are mostly travel expenses and some are quite modest.

I intend to continue as Programme Secretary and hope you will enjoy next years programme in our 50^th year, which I will deliver at the AGM.

LIBRARIAN & PUBLICITY SECRETARY (Mick)

LIBRARY - Having sorted the library books in 2011this year has been devoted to thinning, filing and updating the club records. The Library Minute Books for AGM’s and Committee meetings are up to date as of June 2013.

There have only been xx loans this year = minimal use of library.

A 2012 copy of Kraus (1800-1900) has been purchased at much reduced cost.

As requested at the last AGM the club auction catalogues have been retained and the possibility of having disc books has been looked into. They can be expensive and

some are no longer available in disc form due to loss of paper sales; also unauthorised downloads infringe copy right & hence not an option for a public club.

PUBLICITY - While we have had a wider distribution of the club publicity leaflet the effectiveness has been disappointing. The leaflets distributed to libraries and fairs have resulted in some expressions of interest but not a single new member has appeared. The same is true for website enquiries where dispatched details have produced just one new member and potentially another- hardly an avalanche. A straw poll of new members revealed they mostly got to know about the club by word of mouth. This seems to be the most productive way to get new members (and confirmed so from conversations with other clubs).

To further publicise the club a submission has been made and published in the ‘Coin News’ Society page. This is in addition to our appearance in the diary page. In the future we should follow up with periodic submissions as it is very good free advertising.

A submission has also been made to the Reading Chronicle, but so far no acknowledgement has been received. As suggested at last years AGM the committee is also pursing contacts with other local societies but further use of the internet generally involves expense and considerable commitment, as does producing & circulating specific leaflets for some talks.