scottishmoney

In the past week of searching through coin rolls from my credit unions I have found an 1874 Indian cent, an 1890 Indian cent and a 1909 Lincoln. With the Lincoln it just looks pretty much the same as a bronze coin from pre-1983 but the Indians look different enough you would think someone would have noticed them and kept them. I canna say I mind getting a 140 year old coin from circulation. I have wondered that the farthings might slip out as a penny coin from time to time. Occasionally I have found tanners masquerading as a nickel - most recent was a 1960 Irish tanner.

Bank card only, no cheques in some years now.

No joke here - our furnace gave up the ghost yesterday and we are using our gas fireplace for a bit of heat but temps are falling precipitously and we may leave for a hotel this afternoon if they cannot get the part we need for it. Snow thrower gave up the ghost on Sunday and have to get a new one. This cold stings.

My second great grandfather was from Germany, from Hamburg. Anyway he came over on the boat in 1871 because of the Franco-Prussian war and his father didn't want to lose anymore sons to the Prussian war machine. Fate would have it that some 46 years later he would send his sons off in the US army to fight what he termed "Prussian-Junker militarism", my uncle mentioned above was one of his sons. I have a newspaper article from 1917 where my great great grandfather was mentioned as sending his sons to fight the Kaiser - the editor thought his accent was still heavily German enough to note about it in the article. With WWI our family lost all contact with the family back in Hamburg and didn't re-establish contact until 1997. We are lucky in one respect, the house where my great great grandfather was born is still there. And in the end you will realise that all wars are this - Rich man's war, poor mans fight.

It is the sign of the ruination of the British nation. My first encounter with the new British coinage was a chance find on the floor at Kyiv Borispol airport a few years ago - and my thought was wow- what a downer! An 82 year old monarch and a smidgen of a shield on the reverse. No proud Britannia looking out to the seas she ruled, no pride and no powerful statement.

Hate to admit, I am still using some 100+ year old tools that were my great great grandfathers. My grandfather said they were made to use, not collect. So use they are. Treat them gently and carry on.

I'd like to see before and after pics as well.

The lettering is different, suggesting that individual lettre punches were not used to make this piece - the M, the A, the R in Maria are not of the contemporary "Gothic" style that were used for the punches in the official mint. In fact they are more rounded.

Merry Christmas - remember the Reason for the season.

Another date that comes up frequently at least for sixpences is 1758, a decent hoard of high grade examples was found in a vault somewhere years ago and dispersed into the market. 1787 also saw the coinage of a decent amount of gold for a change - nice because I have a guinea from that year.

Certainly a provenance isn't everything, but it is nice to know that a well known collector thought well enough of something you own that they owned it also. I have a very rare Scots coin that has a provenance going back to 1903 and also a very nice English noble that has a rather well known former owner. But seriously, I wouldn't pay a premium for a provenance - if the coin is nice buy it. Don't buy just the provenance and a stupid piece of overpriced plastic.

As ever it is up to the buyer to determine the grade and the price he/she will pay. I am going to bid on a few lots. But there is only one coin that I might be willing to pay over the odds on. For the others, they are either not all that scarce or I already have a better example than the one that is up for sale. My Scottish 22/- from Queen Mary is nicer than example that got a MS-63 grade in the NGC holder. One thing I cannot overcome is that the coin displays a couple of instances of tooling. There are other coins that don't make the grade on the holder IMHO but are still very nice examples - I just think plastic factory grading means nothing to me. There are a couple of coins I might swoop in on - but I may well do a crack-out fest in the event I get them. A plastic tomb doesn't a provenance make.

Lot of overgraded coins in overpriced plastic. There are some very nice coins, but the grades on the holders are obscene.

An awful lot of them seemed to have been packed into guns during the Napoleonic wars as grapeshot - based on their banged up appearance..

So far my earliest ancestry threads go back in to Scotland and England in the 1650s, my earliest German ancestry into the 1660s. I was rather surprised when I first travelled to Germany, Hamburg and Bavaria and found that records were still available and were not burned in WWII.

I started doing my research back in the pre-internet era and was fortunate that one of my great grandmothers was still alive - she lived into her 90s but was the 11th child of her father who was born in 1835 - he was 70 when she was born!

I agree that on the surface it would appear pretty selfish, but when you factor in the instability of the "innocent" party - it is one of those grey areas where you leave well enough alone and not endeavour to stir a nests of angry bees.

Few years ago I was going through some belongings that belonged to a relative of mine who passed away more than thirty years ago - found a box of lettres from the early 1940s on up through the 1960s that were from two people seeing each other outside of their long marriages - even that the purported child was actually the lover's child and not the reported father. Some secrets are meant to be kept - I felt that neither of the people wanted to have their secret shared - so I burned the lettres and have never shared with the living people involved.

It is a lot different world now doing ancestry research as opposed to 20+ years ago. The internet has made so much more available - whereas in the past I had to travel to distant places to look up information. I also learnt long ago never share too much of what you find - especially if it contrasts popular family stories. Gees, imagine, I found ancestors that had "shotgun" weddings that happened only a couple of months before the birth of their first child etc. It is just confirmation that people are people no matter when and where - but you don't mess with older relatives by sharing that info. OTOH my family research did confirm why there was such an anti-English feeling - 1692 and 1745 were the times!

One of my grandmother's brothers retired at 65, and passed away two weeks later. His wife had been on him to retire at 60 - he should have listened to her.

I find it curious that beginning in the 19th century all the little petty states melded into larger empires that were then dismembered beginning in WWI, then we have now states splitting every which way - ala Jugoslavia and the USSR, Czechoslovakia and even more aspiring so. Why cannot people just make up their flipping minds?

Some people like paying too much for overgraded, overpriced coins. That to me is absurd. Your opinion of my coin doesn't hold candle to my opin of my own coin. Same for some opin of someone in a stuffy, allegedly sterile environment that "grades, authenticates etc" a coin.

I am guessing INS - India Native States, probably something like Jodhpur, Hyderabad etc in the NW of the country.

A sa'age Scot am I, an' partaking of nice original and unmussed wi' cunyie I pursue. Most of my coins, rather like 95% are not in those ridiculous little extruded polystyrene coffins. Note I cracked poor sot Anne out of hers and let her get a breath once the more. People have been sayin' that this or that is here to stay as a fixture of coin collecting for ages. Rather I believe plastic is an evolutional fad. See my post above with the Swedish Kristina crown. Overgraded. Some poke can think it is XF and pay such a fiendish price for it, Eventually sense always prevails. I would buy such piece at VF prices, an' not what some poke in PCGS thinks it prices at but what auction results price it at. People think price guide is a rule, rather it is a suggestion.

Minisodah - ya, eh, I heard o' the place: