One of the most asked questions relating to hammered coins is “how are they made?” Rather than go into a long speech about how it was done, perhaps it is best if I leave this to the experts …. Dave Greenhalgh (Cosmeston Medieval Village) & Barrie Cook (Curator of Medieval Coins, British Museum) Dave reckons…
Introduction Gun money was an emergency issue of coins made by the forces of James II during the Williamite War fought in Ireland between the years 1689 and 1691. It was not quite the same as the emergency issues of the Great Rebellion of 1641 where besieged cities and towns melted silver plate and issued…
Abrasions Area(s) of a coin where a foreign object or another coin has displaced metal in an abraded fashion. Similar to a bag mark but usually on the high points or open fields but not as deep or acute as the former. Accumulation A miscellaneous grouping of coins, often as a monetary hoard. Opposite of…
One of the more difficult aspects of coin collecting is the language barrier one encounters when trying to decipher the legends (text around the edges) of coins. Very few of us speak Latin and truncated Latin still appears on British coins today. As we all know, British coins circulated alongside Irish coins in this country…
No smoker really believes that smoking actually harms them, otherwise they would stop. I recently bought a batch of old banknotes that were hanging up on a pub wall. The notes that were there for a ‘short time’ were re-saleable. The notes that had been there for a ‘longer time’, absorbing second-hand smoke, were un-saleable. …
Being born in 1960, I am very comfortable with currency changes since during my lifetime I have used three completely different currencies. Of course, there was a subtle change in 1978 when the money in our pockets stayed the same but the banknotes changed design. Although things went on as before in Ireland, our new…
Background From medieval to early modern times, the value of a coin was based on its precious metal content – usually silver. With Ireland split into numerous petty kingdoms, the local ruler would have his own mint with a local moneyer to produce coinage. If a moneyer used less precious metal than was required so…
Piedfort is a term used by numismatists to describe coins specially struck as either gifts or souvenirs by monarchs as far back as the twelfth century in France. In England, the monarchs being of French blood, continued the tradition – most notably by Edward I, who issued extra thick silver pennies. Since minting coins was…
The Old Currency Exchange is a specialist dealer and valuer of Irish & GB coins, tokens and banknotes 