The St Patrick Halfpenny is thought to have been a ‘milled coin’ minted in the 17th century for use in Ireland, although there is evidence that later versions were minted in the American Colonies. Two sizes are available to collectors – large and small. Contrary to popular belief, the smaller coin is not a farthing…
![17th century Irish tradesmens' tokens - Dublin, Lazey Hill, Nic[holas] Delone, Penny](https://oldcurrencyexchange.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/dublin-lazey-hill-nicholas-delone-penny.jpg?w=220&h=126&crop=1)
Although manufactured and used over 350 years ago, many of these tokens were issued with pretty much the same form of English as we use nowadays, with a few notable exceptions to their alphabet and spelling, e.g. The letter “U” is always represented by the letter “V”, e.g. DVBLIN There was no letter “J” in…
By the first half of the 17th C, the copper coinage in both Britain and Ireland was in complete disarray. Neither James I nor his son, Charles I, took much interest in providing small denominations and ‘farmed out’ the Royal prerogative of minting copper coins to ‘favourite’ courtiers as patentees – Lords Harington, Richmond, Lennox and Maltravers were the principal…
The five pence (5p) coin (Irish: cúig phingin) was a sub-division of the Irish pound. It was introduced in Ireland on Decimal Day, 15th February 1971 and re-used the design on the shilling coin first produced for the Irish Free State in 1928. Due to the similarity in size and weight, many of the old shillings…
Kosovo is a fertile region lying just to the northeast of Albania, in central former Yugoslavia. It is one of the earliest settlements by the Slavic people who later became the Serb nation – one of the reasons the hard-line nationalists in Serbia were so determined to include it as part of a Greater Serbia during…
The Old Currency Exchange is a specialist dealer and valuer of Irish & GB coins, tokens and banknotes 