VICTORIA D:G: BRITT: REG: F:D:

[poliphilo]

When I was a kid there were still coins in circulation that had Queen Victoria's head on them. Also the heads of every monarch since. You reached in your pocket and out came a handful of history. Victoria, Edward, George, George, Elizabeth. The changeover to decimal currency put an end to that. Now everything in circulation is Elizabethan.

Among the things that came out of the boxes in the garage was a purse full of pre-decimal -loose change that my grandmother had stashed away. It has all the heads- going back to a middle-aged Victoria. There are pennies, halfpennies, farthings. The farthings wear best- and I've selected a couple out for keeping- because they're pretty. The rest are off to the charity shop. None of them is worth anything but loose change; I checked.



Victorian Farthing, 1878

Comments

[oakmouse]

Oh, very nice!

One of the things I hope survived my brother's theft of, and sale of most of, my dad's coin collection, was the coins from the 1880s and 1890s that he got in change as a small boy in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when he first began to collect coins. They haven't much resale value --- they're, shall we say, thoroughly circulated --- but they have enormous sentimental value.

[poliphilo]

A coin that has been through a lot of hands is more interesting than one that's been sitting in a plastic wallet since the day it was minted. It has history...

[oakmouse]

Yes, exactly. I have two mint sets, both of which were gifts from Dad, and I love the way that a newly minted coin is a work of art --- a minor sculpture --- but one mint set is enough for me. Beyond that, I prefer coins that have personality and a back-story, like the Italian lire piece that I was accidentally given in change at the grocery store one day by a clerk who mistook it for an American quarter.