Thinking Of Maybe Collecting UK Coins

You should definitely get into British coins. Such a lot of history and great designs!

All the books mentioned above are great.

I don't know if you saw a previous link but I've got a British coin website up and running which although it doesn't have values of the coins it has many of the different coins pictured back until William and Mary 1689 (going back to Cromwellian coins soon though). It also contains a lot of information on each coin. Unfortunately I'm not aloud to post a link here but you will find it under the CoinsGB thread or by searching CoinsGb in google.

PS the forum is also up and running. You will learn a lot about British coins there and if you join you can post pictures and questions on it.

Regards,
Hus

It's a matter of interest and value for me. While I love early San Francisco mint quarters, they're pricy and I only turn up one or two a year I can afford. But it's a whole different matter with British, Spanish and French silver. There are lots of interesting coins available, many scarce by American standards, selling at 10-20% of comparable American denominations. Among the English coins:

-Hammered silver is spendy, but considering the price vs contemporary Pine Tree shillings, it's a steal.
-Early 19th century shillings sell for a little over melt - comparable rarity US bust quarters sell for 20x as much.

Among the rest of the European coins, I like the silver crowns (English crown, French 5 franc, Netherlands 2.5 gulden, etc.). They sell as bullion, but to my mind they're all interesting as type coins. I also like the early modern French mintmarks - all the scarcity of cc's and the southern mints, but without the price markup.
And a lot of these coins are very attractive - not so much the monarch obverses (the later Queen Victoria coins are hard to match for sheer ugliness) as the reverses with their shields, pillars and waves, dragons, etc.

The bargain crowns are usually low grade, though I picked up an AU 1939 Dutch 2.5 gulden for $10 a couple weeks ago. And while not at melt level, the 19th century shillings mostly sell under $10 in F-VF, which is a bargain compared to most US seated and bust quarters of the same grade and rarity. The problem for me is finding dealers who carry much stock in the US. Mailing from the UK or Europe is expensive.

An antique coin can be ugly?

never heard of it...

I am also trying to collect english coins as well as american

but I find myself already in a bit of a bind with both. I would like to collect the Lincoln wheat cents, not such a hard task for people in the states, as for being in england, popping down to the bank to get 50 rolls is impossible

Also the same with english coins, you'd think being in england would help, but decimalisation in '71 means getting older coins from the bank ain't happening,

So I have no idea where to start appart from ebay and coin dealers,

I live in Surrey so does anyone know of any places I can go to maybe get a lot of old coins in bulk at all?

Antique shops normally sell them...buckets of old penny's & shillings for you to wade through. Good place to kick off a collection.

Thanks Matt.

I'm not saying it goes on in a big scale and might not always work for every coin but, thats the problem when you have prices based on numbers. Even in America people crack out coins and resubmit them in the hopes of getting a higher score and thus more money when they next sell it.

Your probably right Matt but where theres demand there is supply and up until CGS there were only US grading companies and don't forget there are a lot of US collectors that collect British coin whom like to get them slabbed. I can't really see them posting them to the UK to get them slabbed.
It will be interesting to see the response to the letter next month. Theres bound to be someone disagreeing with me.