Introduction Many people think of the Great Rebellion as a two-sided fight – the Irish Catholics versus the Anglo-Irish Protestants … but it was a lot more complicated than that. There were at least five opposing parties during the rebellion, which have been described by Carlyle as follows :- the Catholics of the Pale demanding…
![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…
Most of the coins listed below were struck as ‘proofs’ – the exception being the first of the series, the €5 Special Olympics coin. This was a cupro-nickel coin and is available as BU mini-presentation folder. In addition to this, all other coins were struck in either Sterling silver or gold and are issued in…
By 1760 small copper coins were scarce in Ireland. No royal Irish farthings had been issued since 1744 No royal Irish halfpennies had been issued since 1755 Issues of both denominations were scheduled to be minted in 1760 but apparently they did not arrive in Ireland until 1762. It has been speculated this was partly due…
ffrench’s Bank was probably, the most famous of the provincial private banks in Ireland and due to the frequency that they turn up at auction, they are amongst the most collectible of early Irish banknotes. The bank was founded in late 1803 by Sir Thomas ffrench and William Keary. The correct form for the surname is “double f” in lower case, i.e. ffrench. Sir…
The first locally produced Irish coinage was the so-called Hiberno-Norse coinage which was first minted in Dublin in about 995-7 AD under the authority of Sihtric III (aka Sihtric Silkenbeard), the Norse King of Dublin. There is no evidence for the native Irish producing coins before this, so it is likely that their economy was not coin-based. The…
The sixpence (6d) (Irish: reul) coin was a sub-division of the pre-decimal Irish pound, worth 1/40 of a pound or ½ of a shilling. It ‘nickname’ was a ‘tanner’ and it is thought that this is from John Sigismund Tanner, originally from Saxe-Coburg, who was a medallist and designer at the Royal Mint. The sixpence he designed for George II…
The threepence (3d) (Irish: leath reul) coin was an Irish pre-decimal coin and a great favourite of golfers who often used it as a green marker. There were 4 threepences to a shilling and 80 to an old pound. The Irish name (leath reul) literally meant “half a sixpence” and, unlike many other Irish coins of the time, it…
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…
The Old Currency Exchange is a specialist dealer and valuer of Irish & GB coins, tokens and banknotes 