Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 33 i Coin Collector

BUY AND SELL ON DECAMPE, MORE THAN 80 MILLION COLLECTABLES ARE WAITING FOR YOU!…

Every year, I identify and record several coin hoards from all periods as part of my role as Norfolk County Council’s numismatist. A small hoard of 13 silver denarii from near Dowham Market is one of the more interesting that has turned up this year; the issues within it span well over a century from the late-2nd century BC to the reign of Emperor Tiberius (AD 14–37). What I really like about this hoard is how its constituent coins tell a story on an epic scale – they chart the fall of the Roman Republic, the civil wars that brought about its collapse and the emergence of Rome’s new rulers, first Julius Caesar, then the Triumvirs and, finally, the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The hoard is probably what we might call an…

Crimestoppers appeal The charity Crimestoppers has launched an appeal over the unsolved theft of one of the most important collections of early Scottish coins. More than 1,000 coins from the 12th and 13th centuries were stolen from the home of Lord and Lady Stewartby in Broughton, near Peebles, in June 2007. They cover the earliest period of Scottish coinage, from the reign of David I (r.1124–53) to Alexander III (r.1249–86). The collection was started by Lord Stewartby when he was a child. Lord Stewartby, the renowned numismatist, has since died. His collection of Scottish coins was entrusted to The Hunterian at the University of Glasgow in 2017. It is hoped that the missing coins will be reunited with the rest of the collection if the appeal is successful. Crimestoppers is…

The woman on the bull. The stick figure. The mysterious €S’ within the star. If we’re to believe the press, then by tomorrow or the day after, we could all become millionaires at the supermarket checkout just by finding a rare €2 coin. Yet, most coin dealers in Germany are far from ‘amused’ by the euro craze – they’re practically inundated with phone calls about supposed rarities and minting errors. I aimed to shed some light on this subject with a specialist book – but now I, too, have the pleasure of receiving such queries: ‘I read a few weeks ago on the [sic] Google that there’s a €2 coin from 2002 from Greece in circulation worth €80,000’ a taxi driver recently wrote to me. ‘Curious, I checked my wallet…

Nearly 40 years ago, my late mother bought a job lot of India General Service Medals 1908–35 at a local auction house, knowing that I had an interest in Indian campaigns. One of these had been awarded to Henry Redvers Kent (known as ‘Harry’) of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment, for his service during the Third Afghan War between 1919 and 1921 (Figure 1). It was only many years later that the resources available to medal researchers developed sufficiently to add some detail to Harry’s life. For anyone interested in the family background of individuals represented in their medal collections, census records are an important source. These revealed that Harry came from King’s Lynn in Norfolk. His mother had children from at least three different partners between the late…

For some numismatists, collecting is the habit of a lifetime. Something that they’ve done for so long, they wouldn’t feel complete without it. For others, the hobby has gone beyond pleasure and practice – it has become a pursuit, and one that’s done diligently, with financial gain in mind. Regardless of the type of collector you are, there’s one thing that every coin enthusiast can agree on: quality is king. And, the joy of coin collecting is that prioritising quality doesn’t necessarily mean breaking the bank. Where quality is concerned, there are generally five factors to take into account: the sharpness of the strike, the condition of the coin, its lustre, colour and attractiveness. Coins are graded using these baselines – and sellers employ terms such as ‘mint’, ‘proof’, ‘uncirculated’,…

Ice Age giants A new three-coin collection from The Royal Mint explores the stories of three gentle giants from the Ice Age – the steppe mammoth, woolly rhinoceros and giant deer. These three creatures were some of the largest mammals to have roamed the Earth during the Pleistocene Epoch. The Pleistocene Epoch, also referred to as the Ice Age, began around 2.6 million years ago. This period saw vast glaciers, known as ice sheets, expand across the Earth’s surface and take up large swathes of land. The ice sheets extended ed beyond the North and South Poles, where they still exist today, and reached as far as the Midlands in England and across what is now Canada and the northern United States of America. These ice sheets could be up…