Help With A Great Britian Denomination Set

You all are great .. with good information and ideas.




Thank you very much for the kind offer. I do have quite a few 3 pence coins ... in fact somewhere I have a box that has most of a set of silver ones .. from mid 1800's to 1940's. I never checked them out but would guess I am missing the harder date coins.

I am trying to stay with copper and silver coins .. although next time a gold half sovereign comes into
my local shop I make pick that up for this page.

I have stared these albums .. to put some fun back into my collecting.

Today I picked up a 1889 Crown, it does have a rim ding, but they said I could trade it out when a better one comes in.

I also picked up a 1942 Two shilling and a 1936 One Florin.
And traded my Half Crown for a better grade one. I am guessing the two shilling and the florin have the same value, not sure why they are called different.

Now my plan for this page will be

1 - Farthing
2 - Half Penny
3 - Penny
4 - 2 pence
5 - 3 pence
6 - 4 pence
7 - 6 Pence
8 - Shilling
9 - Two Shilling
10 - Florin
11 - Half Crown
12- Crown

Leaving open swapping out the two shilling for a half sovereign.

I now see on ebay I should be able to get a 2 and 4 pence coin at a good price.

Arkie ... I like that coin .. makes me want to get one.

The one I got today is a Crown .. The reverse looks like a old guy riding a horse .. riding over a dragon .. or something

This might give me a different coin to use ..

Am I right that a Florin and two Shilling are the same value?

I need to stay out of this world coin book ..

That 1893 5 pound coin I think would be a very nice coin to own

Is it possible to find those?

I did a couple searches also ..
Those proof only issue ... are pretty high ..
same with the double florin.

I see the Sovereign's once in a while .. I sure would like to see a Victoria 5 pound ...

Here are some 2 pounds anyway: http://www.drakesterling.com.au/coi...-2/two-pound
And sovereigns did circulate (mostly before World War I) but I think they were more accustomed to living in bank vaults than being spent.

This design is much the same as the one used on the gold coinage. It is St George, patron saint of England, slaying the dragon. The design was made by Italian medallist Benedetto Pistrucci.


Yes indeed they were. As Mr T said, it was mainly prior to WWI. From 1897 to 1918, copper farthings were deliberately blackened prior to leaving the mint, to prevent them from easily being confused with half-sovereigns or sovereigns in circulation.

The story behind those low mintages is pretty interesting!

The rich gold miners returning from the Yukon (and plenty more poor ones) wanted a place to refine their gold and strike it into a trusted format, ready for trade.

The Royal Canadian Mint expected them all to come back through Ottawa and strike their gold into sovereigns, but where did the ungrateful louts end up? San Francisco!! The route was easier and it cost less to strike your gold into Eagles there. Canada received only a fraction of the expected demand, and all C-mint sovereigns are pretty hard to come by. (We didn't strike dollar-denominated gold coins until 1912, four years after the sovereign program was started.)

The $5 and $10 coins also saw low mintages (never exceeding 170,000), and they were gone for good by 1914. The C-mint sovereigns sputtered on until 1919, despite mintages below 4,000 in some years.

I have a proof Five Pounds and a proof Two Pounds of 1937. However, the 1937 Sovereign and Half of 1937 are much harder to find, apart from the gold proof set.

Generally speaking, gold coins were replaced in circulation by paper money just before the First World War, for most countries.
Most countries came off the Gold Standard, by 1933, and so gold coins were not minted at all until tha advent of collector gold coins, starting from about the 1980's.

I have very few 'made for collector' NCLT coins of any sort.