Help--inherited Collection

[Guest Kent Lind]

Hi folks:

My wife inherited a rather large (to my eye) collection of world coins from her grandfather who was a Chilean diplomat from the 1920s to the 1950s, and who gathered coins in all his world travels. Right now they are just in bags and boxes by country, with about 50 countries represented and between 50 and 300 coins/country. We're just starting to go through them country by country and mount them in 2X2 mylar squares and sort them into notebooks. We're not really coin collectors and our objective is to just get them sorted out and stored properly in notebooks so we can give them to our daughter some day.

I'm guessing that 75% are early 20th century coins, 24% are 19th century coins, and 1% are 18th century and older. The oldest coins appear to be Spanish.

In any event, we finished sorting and mounting all the British coins last night and ended up with about 200 British coins, the majority of which are well-worn pennies and half pennies from the 1850s to the 1950s. However, the 3 most interesting (oldest) coins are the following:

1806 silver coin the size of a US silver dollar with Carolus*IIII Dei*Gratia on the front and *HISPAN * ET* IND *REX* 8R * P * I on the back around a crown over a coat of arms.

1807 coin the size of a US half dollar identical to the one above except that it says 4R * P * I on the back

1781 coin the size of a US nickel idential to the one above except that it says 1R * P * I on the back.

Can any of you tell me what these three coins are and whether they have any value?

We also have a dozen or so far older looking coins that appear to have a British coat of arms on one side and a shield with a coat of arms design on the other side and no apparent date or words. Although they may be worn off. Some others have a coat of arms on one side and a big M on the other. Not sure if these are even British, but they were with the rest of the British coins.

We don't have any intent to sell this collection. We just want to get it organized and stored properly to pass on to our daughter some day. But it would be interesting to know if we have any particularly valuable coins so that we know how much care to take with them.

Regards,

Kent Lind

China Spring, Texas

USA

[Chris Perkins]

Dear Kent,

Well sounds like you have a lot of work ahead! The coins you mention sound Spanish. Probably 8 Reales, 4 Reales and 1 Real. I'm not an expert in hispanic coins so I imagine they could possibly colonial (ie South American). Like with all coins, their value will depend on the exact grade.

If most of them are 20th Century coins from around the whole World then I would imagine you should consider purchasing the Krause 'Catalog of World coins 1901-2003' as that contains market values for every coin (well 99.999%) produced during that time. it costs around US$50.00

Please feel free to attach scans to your messages here, as and when you can. I can certainly help on the British coins.

Chris

www.predecimal.com