20p Dating Error?

[Peckris]

Thanks for all the good advice you lot gave about our mule 20p I am now after more advice! my 10 yr old went to a car boot sale at the weekend and came home with what he thinks is a very rare coin and a few old pennies. He now wants to start collecting old coins so it would be helpful if I could buy him a book that would help him with his new hobby! Can anyone recommend a good book for a beginer in coin collecting. Thanks again.

Anna

My own experience was of beginning with a coin magazine (the late lamented Coin Monthly) - maybe a periodical subscription would be the best way to start? My other thought is the famous Year Book (a title now owned by the Coin News publishers, I think? with the famous "Blue Pages" - no, nothing to worry about! - and started by Coin Monthly in the 1960s). There are other "Introduction to..." books, but they are usually too wide-ranging, skating in brief detail over a lot of subjects which the average 10 yr old might not be entirely interested in.

[Rob]

Hi Dave, yes noticed that and have also been through every 2p in our 2p jar! Got lots with new pence on but none from 1983.

Thanks for all the good advice you lot gave about our mule 20p I am now after more advice! my 10 yr old went to a car boot sale at the weekend and came home with what he thinks is a very rare coin and a few old pennies. He now wants to start collecting old coins so it would be helpful if I could buy him a book that would help him with his new hobby! Can anyone recommend a good book for a beginer in coin collecting. Thanks again.

Anna

That's quite a difficult one. Usually you need to look for a specific area of collecting and then find the books to suit. There have been a wide range of books over the years which have covered the topic generally, but it is difficult to say what you need. Clearly you need to identify coins, but if this encompasses the whole world you need something like Krause which would be overkill and prohibitively expensive for beginners. If restricting yourself to British coins post 1797 then Chris' CCGB would be ok, but any earlier and you need to go onto something like Spink's Coinage of England which is produced annually. Both of these have a glossary of terms which is useful if you want to understand what is written about coins. Most books tend to cover a restricted field but then go into some depth.

You can look in the gallery to see the sort of coins people have in their collections. There is everything from Roman to the present day. Obviously the easiest to collect are those from circulation, but for older things you would have to do some research regarding what is available and who can supply.

[Red Riley]

I think Spinks' is a good start, but as a youngster with a few pence or at best a few pounds to spend, the prices will be meaningless. So why not get an old one! All the information is there, it's just that the prices are out of date. eBay will be awash with these things at, I would guess a couple of quid plus postage.

Edited July 6, 2009 by Red Riley

[Kronos]

I think Spinks' is a good start, but as a youngster with a few pence or at best a few pounds to spend, the prices will be meaningless. So why not get an old one! All the information is there, it's just that the prices are out of date. eBay will be awash with these things at, I would guess a couple of quid plus postage.

I can't agree more.

[Half-Pint]

I think Spinks' is a good start, but as a youngster with a few pence or at best a few pounds to spend, the prices will be meaningless. So why not get an old one! All the information is there, it's just that the prices are out of date. eBay will be awash with these things at, I would guess a couple of quid plus postage.

I can't agree more.

I just saw this:

Personally would rather have a gold undated 20p !

Gold Undated 20p