copper123

Super coin worth £200 +

Got it now LOL

well in 2013 they do anyway - not sure about the 1780's

Is not "A bank passing on a new currency to its customers " called putting a new issue into circulation these days - surely a bank has no say in what happens to money it has just given out to a customer - they do with it as they wish

I suspect the reason was because ,even though they were produced in large numbers, they were hoarded - GB plc was in real trouble at the time france looked in real danger of either passing their revolution to the UK or later on with invasion from napoleon. The american colonies were lost so a pottentally a large source of tax income was no more. And finally the king was behaving very strangely A lot of the coins in circulation were old and very worn (how often have you seen William III silver with no clear dates). The old addage of bad money drives out good , rang true here with everyone in the country trying to get hold of these coins of good weight and high silver content and salting them away under beds etc , just in case the worst happened.

I strongly suspect that many crowns dated 1935 and 1937 did circulate for short times . Often kept as pocket pieces these silver crowns would stop in someones pocket as a "good luck" charm. Probably till the owner maybe needed the money for train fare to work , or even food , he would reluctantly spend it (no credit cards til the mid sixties). My grandfather told me he had a gold sov till the mid 1930s as a pocket piece but it got spent on a train fare to work as he had no spare cash one day just b4 pay day.

Maybe we should give farthings a new nickname "A goodie"

SHAKESPEARE

It would be nice if it were a genuine piece but the odds are stacked way against it.

I am expecting Bill Oddie to pop up in this forum any minute

They are expensive , but look top quality too , so are ideal for a dealer who would get heavy use out of them

Difficult date - nice coin but you are very pleased

Or maybe that it looks like a thingy. Didn't baldrick "do" sailors for sixpence , i wonder what a groat would have got you?

I must admit that is a really lovely coin. But i am not too sure of the portait - that mouth looks really strange, a bit like he's just been told a filthy joke

Funny enough the 1855 ww raised farthing is far rarer than the ww incuse coin but it often struggles to reach even a premium over the price of a ww incuse coin - it seems collectors are very reluctant to pay any sort of premium for it . Maybe collectors only want one example of this date.

I read somewhere the wren is the most common british bird so that maybe its big claim to fame now. people don't believe it as they say they don't see them , they are a bit reclusive and tend not to be as obvious as other birds like robins and sparrows

I have always found that the worst time to sell coins is the three weeks running up to xmas and the month after xmas- coins put on at these times just don't get the prices you think they will get - there are always exceptions of course. Logically it is a good time to buy as others are not.

Womder if his mate got a bargain then LOL

yes he did he stopped describing everything he had on sale as ef or unc and just said things like "lovely grade" or other meaningless statements. - in the end even he got bored with his own overgradeing.

yes martin stopped miss grading coins a while ago - but looks like he has started with the overgradeing again - not that he is the only one to do it

"WE ARE NOT AMUSED!!!!!!"

The trouble is both the American market and the UK market seem to have taken different paths over the last twenty years or so with collectors in both countries totally sure their country is taking the right path . While both countries have much in common the paths and developements in the field of coin dealing they are miles apart

thanks for very informative answer - surpose the big loss to the treasury in the big meltdown and recoinage of the copper halfpennies and farthings in 1796 - 1797 was fadeing into the past and a more liberal and enlightened era was approaching. Also i am not actually sure of the legal standing of these" bank tokens" ie were they official currency or just considered as something else. To be fair the most copied coins i know are George III halfpennies 1775 and the 1816-1820 issue shillings , there are hundreds of thousands out there.

Would not forgery of these pieces result in the rarther drastic sentence of death, or was the very common death sentence becoming rarer as Farmer George entered his final years?

Rob is far far behind the times - I have seen kingfishers in the irwell never mind ruddy ducks