May 23rd. 2016.
Next
club meeting Monday 6th June
2016.
This is the club's
AGM and Annual display Competition for the Michael Broome Cup. The AGM is the
meeting where the officer's report the status of the club and the membership
voice their concerns/ideas. It is also the time where the club committee is
elected for the forthcoming year.
Given
that recent AGM’s have seen a low level of membership participation this year
we are trialling a minimised AGM. With this newsletter is a single Committee
Report with contributions from all the officers and the AGM agenda, the
financial balance sheet and the 2015 AGM minutes. We will not be repeating the
content verbatim at the meeting. After the formalities, the agenda points that
the Committee requires membership feedback will be discussed. Then there will
be the opportunity for members to raise any issues, so please take time to read
the report and gather your thoughts prior to the meeting. The election of
officers will follow.
If
you are willing to stand for election to the Committee please contact the
chairman (tel 01276 65663) or the secretary at the
number on your membership card.
The second part of
the evening will be devoted to the annual display competition, with the winner
being awarded the Michael Broome Memorial Trophy for 1 year. The competition is
open to all members and can cover any topic connected to numismatics. So to all
members please have a go and enter a display.
There may be some
limited time available at the end of the meeting for dealing but please note
that the time before the start of the meeting is for members to look at the
Displays and perhaps renew their memberships.
Meetings are held
at the
May Meeting
This was a talk by
Stuart Adams on ‘Writing a Book and other Token Tales’. He began by thanking us
for inviting him to talk again after approximately five years and complimented
us on our attendance. He went on to talk about the choice of what to write
about and the mechanics of how you do that. Stuart is well versed in computer technology and was able to handle the ‘IT’ side of
book production himself, including all the photography. He published his first
book in 1993, intending it to be a series, however his second book did not come
out till 2014 and is a revised version of the first book, brought up to date
and expanded.
Stuart explained
that his topic, Tokens of Essex, allowed him to stick to a fairly rigid
geographical area, since Essex is bordered by water, the Lea on the West, the Stour to the North, the North Sea
to the East and the Thames to the South. Administratively though, matters were
a little different with London creeping into Essex inside the M25 to the East.
This explains why some series of Essex tokens have sharp cutoffs, with the
pieces suddenly no longer being produced. The reason is that the London
Boroughs were building new housing estates on the old farmland. Going back to
the mechanics of production, Stuart explained how the introduction of
electronic capture and editing had immensely improved and simplified many
aspects of book production. A tip for would be photographers is to use a green
background for Copper, blue for Silver and Red for Gold and other bright colours. He then told us some of the stories behind the
coins he had included in the book. The new version of the book contains
considerable extra details over the original. Details not directly related to
Essex are given in square boxes.
Stuart started with
a 1d token from Plaistow, clearly marked as being from Essex in 1857. These
were a type of pub token used at meetings held by various societies in pubs and
were given in exchange for refreshments. One of the interesting things about
the Token was the spelling of ‘Plastow’, without the
‘i’, for which Stuart has no explanation. Peter
mentioned that the ‘Worshipful Company of Plaisterers’
also have an ‘i’ which goes back to the 16th
Century. Stuart also had a counterstamped version of
the token issued by John Usher. Next up was a 2d Working Mens
club token, also from Plastow, the original club is
now a block of flats. After that we had some Bixby tokens, all issued at Becontree
Heath. His tokens were often used to pay his workers on site and then converted
to cash later, something confirmed when Stuart bought
a zinc token from a farmer in Bedfordshire, who had found it on his farm, a
considerable way from Becontree Heath.
Next was an Epping
bakery token, the only one Stuart has seen, for which he paid the princely sum
of £7! Other ways of researching tokens are to put adverts in the newspapers.
One such, for a £1 token by Nunn, produced a letter from a lady who turned out
be the granddaughter of Nunn and gave the history of the business. Following on
was a Young Farmers medal from Chelmsford found at a boot fair, which Stuart
phoned up about giving him a lead to yet more tokens, issued in the 1970-80s.
Then we had a Clacton Pier token, Clacton
Pier famously known for its address, 1, North Sea! This completed the ‘Writing
a Book’ part of the talk, but Stuart went on to regale us with other tales
including tokens used for fundraising in the rebuilding of Selby Abbey, made
from the melted lead when the roof went up in flames and put in a box made from
reclaimed pew timber. Next were pennies and cameos ensconced in lava from Mt.
Etna.
The talk was
rounded off by an amazing tale concerning a penny (EdwardVII
1905) which had an engraved obverse, clearly Edward VII. Four years later a
remarkably similar halfpenny turned up. Was there a farthing Stuart wondered?
In fact there was and it turned up a year later! Stuart then traced the
journeys from Nottingham, Sidmouth and Blackpool these coins had made to their current resting
place, Buckhurst Hill.
Thanks to Stuart
for a fascinating talk!
Future Events.
·
London Coin Fair at Holiday Inn, Bloomsbury 4th June
·
Midland Coin Fair – National Motorcycle Museum 10th
June
·
St. James’s Auctions Ltd. – 10 Charles II St., London
27th June
Past Events
·
10 years ago in May 2006 David Powell gave a talk on
‘American Civil War Tokens’.
·
30 years Mr. J.
Andrew delivered a talk on the Exeter mint.
·
40 years ago was our ‘Short
Talks’ evening.
Club Secretary.