Does anyone know anything about Briots coinage?

[bagerap]

A sort of ancient form of bar code! Hence the price being described, even in relatively modern times, as 'on the nail.'

Outside the Corn Market in Bristol there were until at least the 70s a series of ancient flat topped iron bollards, known as Nails. Supposedly these acted as De Facto desks for the corn dealers and all monetary tranactions took place there.

Be nice if it could be proven.

[unc]

Well that's it exactly. Some dealers offer coins as being 'oficially de-monetised' because the coins offered are holed in the centre. Well how do they know that the provenance of their claim is correct? We don't know what they did to demonetised silver coins at that time in 1696. I will stand corrected if people enlighten me. This is of interest to numismatic enthusiasts as far as I know though.

I can imagine (anecdotally of course) a group of contemporary tax officials punching and bending coin to make it unrecognisable and to prevent re-circulation. Then dumping it all into a big basket or something and then farming the lot out to the treasury etc...

It was all done by weight and there must have been some primitive security associated with the process.

If you look at the thing, it has been bent twice on two sides. The coin has been repaired by being bent back into shape. It has been crudely holed with a square piercing metal object which would have made it sharp at the point of contact. Would you have taken more effort if making a touchpiece etc?

I stand firm on the issue that this is probably a survivor of the re-coinage of the 17th century. There must have been a few dodgy types who tried to feather their nests at that time. maybe that's how it got through.

Cheers,

Alex

(unc)

We do know what happened because the dates for demonetising various denominations wwere set by decree, just as they are today. Consequently it became illegal to use clipped crowns for example after one date and half crowns on another. The hammered coinage could be used for payments to government officials and was collected for recycling in this way. A specific cut off date for use was set for each denomination and a finite period of time allowed for exchanging the old currency by weight. Ruding devotes half a dozen pages to the recoinage and it is difficult without copying the whole text verbatim to get all the info out. There is also a useful 6 page article in the BNJ, vol.3 (1906) by Philip Nelson, who listed figures for the recoinage in terms of the amount of silver coined which he found in a contemporary manuscript and combined them with data extracted about the recoinage from Ruding. There are slight discrepancies, but the data holds up fairly well in Ruding from that written in 1697.

But the mechanics of how the coins were destrroyed remains a mystery? Wouldn't it be good to have some historical understanding?

[unc]

Well that's it exactly. Some dealers offer coins as being 'oficially de-monetised' because the coins offered are holed in the centre. Well how do they know that the provenance of their claim is correct? We don't know what they did to demonetised silver coins at that time in 1696. I will stand corrected if people enlighten me. This is of interest to numismatic enthusiasts as far as I know though.

I can imagine (anecdotally of course) a group of contemporary tax officials punching and bending coin to make it unrecognisable and to prevent re-circulation. Then dumping it all into a big basket or something and then farming the lot out to the treasury etc...

It was all done by weight and there must have been some primitive security associated with the process.

If you look at the thing, it has been bent twice on two sides. The coin has been repaired by being bent back into shape. It has been crudely holed with a square piercing metal object which would have made it sharp at the point of contact. Would you have taken more effort if making a touchpiece etc?

I stand firm on the issue that this is probably a survivor of the re-coinage of the 17th century. There must have been a few dodgy types who tried to feather their nests at that time. maybe that's how it got through.

Cheers,

Alex

(unc)

We do know what happened because the dates for demonetising various denominations wwere set by decree, just as they are today. Consequently it became illegal to use clipped crowns for example after one date and half crowns on another. The hammered coinage could be used for payments to government officials and was collected for recycling in this way. A specific cut off date for use was set for each denomination and a finite period of time allowed for exchanging the old currency by weight. Ruding devotes half a dozen pages to the recoinage and it is difficult without copying the whole text verbatim to get all the info out. There is also a useful 6 page article in the BNJ, vol.3 (1906) by Philip Nelson, who listed figures for the recoinage in terms of the amount of silver coined which he found in a contemporary manuscript and combined them with data extracted about the recoinage from Ruding. There are slight discrepancies, but the data holds up fairly well in Ruding from that written in 1697.

But the mechanics of how the coins were destrroyed remains a mystery? Wouldn't it be good to have some historical understanding?

Yeah mate....

[Rob]

Well that's it exactly. Some dealers offer coins as being 'oficially de-monetised' because the coins offered are holed in the centre. Well how do they know that the provenance of their claim is correct? We don't know what they did to demonetised silver coins at that time in 1696. I will stand corrected if people enlighten me. This is of interest to numismatic enthusiasts as far as I know though.

I can imagine (anecdotally of course) a group of contemporary tax officials punching and bending coin to make it unrecognisable and to prevent re-circulation. Then dumping it all into a big basket or something and then farming the lot out to the treasury etc...

It was all done by weight and there must have been some primitive security associated with the process.

If you look at the thing, it has been bent twice on two sides. The coin has been repaired by being bent back into shape. It has been crudely holed with a square piercing metal object which would have made it sharp at the point of contact. Would you have taken more effort if making a touchpiece etc?

I stand firm on the issue that this is probably a survivor of the re-coinage of the 17th century. There must have been a few dodgy types who tried to feather their nests at that time. maybe that's how it got through.

Cheers,

Alex

(unc)

We do know what happened because the dates for demonetising various denominations wwere set by decree, just as they are today. Consequently it became illegal to use clipped crowns for example after one date and half crowns on another. The hammered coinage could be used for payments to government officials and was collected for recycling in this way. A specific cut off date for use was set for each denomination and a finite period of time allowed for exchanging the old currency by weight. Ruding devotes half a dozen pages to the recoinage and it is difficult without copying the whole text verbatim to get all the info out. There is also a useful 6 page article in the BNJ, vol.3 (1906) by Philip Nelson, who listed figures for the recoinage in terms of the amount of silver coined which he found in a contemporary manuscript and combined them with data extracted about the recoinage from Ruding. There are slight discrepancies, but the data holds up fairly well in Ruding from that written in 1697.

But the mechanics of how the coins were destrroyed remains a mystery? Wouldn't it be good to have some historical understanding?

Once they had come into the possession of government officials they were withdrawn and melted in a crucible, just as they would silver plate or any other raw material. Then cast into ingots and rolled into plate and finally blanks would be cut out for the new coins. Any pointed tool could be used to make a piercing as long as it was harder than the silver.

Edited December 14, 2011 by Rob

[TomGoodheart]

It has been crudely holed with a square piercing metal object which would have made it sharp at the point of contact. Would you have taken more effort if making a touchpiece etc?

Ah, well, touchpieces were different. They were officially pierced (as far as I know through the Goldsmiths Company) by punching out a small circle of metal. This metal (mostly gold from Angels) was the fee or commission to the jeweller for the work of piercing the piece. Hence the holes are always very round and almost always in the same place on the coin.

Things like Newark siege coins have much coarser and less consistent holes since they were pierced as souvenirs, presumably by their owner and strictly speaking aren't touchpieces. More a type of medalet I guess.

[Red Riley]

Ah, well, touchpieces were different. They were officially pierced (as far as I know through the Goldsmiths Company) by punching out a small circle of metal. This metal (mostly gold from Angels) was the fee or commission to the jeweller for the work of piercing the piece. Hence the holes are always very round and almost always in the same place on the coin.

And unsurprisingly always very large...

[Gollum]

I'm sorry guys but I know nothig of this subject, but I want to ask a question, I noticed whilst reading some articles on American sites about coins that the U.S gov't claim were not officially released to circulation being declared as belonging to the government and removed from the owner or finder. If this coin ( or others like it )where, how to put it !, erm, reclaimed by the gov't back then for recoinage, would that make the UK mint or govt the legal owners and could we have a situation soon where our own mint or gov't could do the same as the American one by taking it back legally. Just asking. Sorry to have broken into this one.