I went to two different stores on Saturday and Tuesday. But I am doing the posts out of order.
Back to the extremely local store (that prices coins based on physical size). Actually, they are seeming more legit now that the junk silver is out front and is actually competitively priced - although silver Libertads are still $40. I might buy my first
Peace dollar from them in the future - for once, they are priced the same as two half dollars, or four quarters! That's a rarity in Canada for American silver.
OK, let's get to it. I spent about $12.
$2.25 because it's "big". (Krause puts a VG example at $25!) This is an interesting large copper, although cleaned (it has a salmon colour, ecch). The Scandinavian countries have an irritating habit of uniting. So this bank token is from the Denmark half of then-united Denmark-Norway. 96 skilling made one rigsdaler, so this is equivalent to 1/6 rigsdaler. In 1813, Denmark-Norway was officially bankrupt and by 1814 they had lost their little section of the Napoleonic Wars to Great Britain. Later in 1814, Norway was taken away and given to Sweden. So, times were very tough for Denmark - and as usual, silver coins disappeared and were replaced by large coppers in their place. In 1808 the coin of equivalent value to this one contained 2.05 grams of silver.
But that wasn't today's only bank token! A bucket of tokens was full of mostly Klondike Dollars (for Edmonton's annual Klondike Days festival - they all expired in the 80s), as is expected here, but also inside were two pre-Confederation bank tokens... and they were 50 cents each!! Canadian "colonial" tokens aren't as exciting as American colonial tokens, but there are a lot more because Canada stayed colonial for a lot longer. Private banks and firms issued scads of tokens and notes long after official coinage was introduced in 1858, especially in provinces and territories not yet covered by the Canadian Confederation of 1867. "Bas Canada" is "Lower Canada" - lower down on the St. Laurence River (but actually further North - confused yet?).
Two tokens from Montreal means I can drag this out even longer... the Bank of the People folded in 1895 but its better-established rival the Bank of Montreal is still a major Canadian bank, although they don't make their own coins anymore. The "Province of Canada" was a merger between Upper and Lower Canada... but it was unpopular. Lots of support for Canadian Confederation actually came from the French-speakers of Lower Canada hoping to once again separate from Upper Canada within a greater nation... yes, we became a nation because we couldn't stand each other.
A whole bunch of cleaned copper coins are in here as well. They are very sneakily cleaned and in high-grade otherwise... but it's OK because they were cheap.
Same deal with this one. Someone must have put some effort into this.
A type I didn't yet have, this one might still be worth something because of the high grade and low mintage. The cleaning didn't give these an unnatural colour, but it did create an unnatural pattern of colours. My intuition said that was suspicious - so I'll trust it more often from now on...
Once again. Uncirculated but cleaned.
Not all was lost! Someone sold some BU Ethiopian coins still in some 2x2s, and they also got the "50 cents each" treatment. So that was a great deal - these feature Emperor Haile Selassie, who's regarded as the incarnation of God by the Rastafarians for some reason.
Here's a better view of one of these coins (5 santeem, if you were wondering).
This is a strange token, but at least I managed to date it (after much effort).
Four brass coins from the 20s and 30s. Most Nazi coins are zinc, but before 1939, they could afford less cheap metals, like brass and copper. It always surprises me to see these familiar (and detestable) designs on a different metal than usual. The previous reichspfennige were much nicer...
First Page
Previous Page
Posted 05/03/2014 11:25 pm
