How Far Back Can We Go? Sixth Edition! Ended At 1380 Waiting On 1379

1910 -- United Kingdom, 1 shilling:

Some facts about King Edward VII.

King Edward VII was born in November 1841 and had to wait some 59½ years before he became King, never taught the roles of statecraft by his mother (Who did not get on with him, finding him too profligerate and not like his virtuous father or splendid sister(Empress Victoria of Germany 1840 - 1901).

Yet despite this, Edward was a very able and incredibly popular ruler, he was served by many able ministers and was known for his socially outward appearances. His queen was the stunning Queen Alexandria (1844 - 1925), a daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark (1819 - 1906). She still had a great figure and dark hair in her 70s. Edward was often seen cavorting with women like Lily Langtry and others.

By the time Edward was king, he was obese, bald and in poor health, it was health scare that saw his coronation deferred until August 1902, even though he had been king since January 29 1901. Coins and stamps were prepared with his effigy by 1902. However in 1901 Victoria issued 2 high face value Stamp Duties with his image.

Edward died on May 6th 1910, aged 68 years and his son King George V (Aged 44, born 1865) succeeded to the throne. 1910 coins all have his effigy.






A 1910 penny of Edward, well worn and a survivor of many travels and penny arcades. It is like someone has stabbed him in the eye there or he has been drinking too much coffee

The coins of Edward were similar to the last coinage of Victoria except now the Shilling, Florin and Half Crown all got design upgrades. The 6d and 3d were given slightly different crowns, otherwise the same as previous reigns.

Crowns were only issued as Proofs in 1902 and Gold coins were unchanged with £2 and £5 issued in 1902, but only Sovereigns and their halves issued in the rest of his reign.

The Bronze was unchanged as it had a design upgrade in 1895. The effigy of Edward VII was by George William de Saulles and his reign was not long enough for any second or third coinages.

1910 British coins from my collection:







The Florin with the standing Britannia was beautiful but sadly it wore badly in circulation. Like the early Standing Liberty quarters and Buffalo nickels, the date was one of the first things to wear off.

This year's Ottoman coin is a nice surprise too.





It's the same size as the 1 Milleme, but this is a 1 Piastre and is .833 silver rather than cupronickel. The tiny coin is smaller than a Threepence (It's face value was 2½ pence or so).

Dated Year 2 of Mehmed 5's reign (AH 1328) - Fine to VF

Another tiny coin is this miniscule 10 cent piece of Ceylon





1910 - Condition fine and also silver (80%). This tiny coin was even smaller than the silver 2 annas of India, they were 1/8th of a rupee - these coins are 1/10th of a rupee.

Just 15.5mm in size (0.61 of an inch) and weighing 1.16grams - they are smaller than 3 pences, 5 Kopecks and 1 Piastres/Kurus. A fascinating tiny piece of numismatic history.

The Ceylon rupee was decimal made up of 100 cents instead of 16 Annas. They had an even smaller ¼ cent coin at 14mm.

However all these coins are huge next to Dorado's beautiful Travancore cash coin, which is just 10.8mm in size!

Love those gold pieces NumisRob - The Double eagles are a beautiful design - St Gauden's was a magnificient designer.

Alas I am still in the beginning stages and gold is a long way off for me yet. It's really silver and base metals for the time being with me, not that I mind, my greatest joy is derived from nearly any type of old different coins.

Here is another humble surprise from my stable.





Another La Seamuse half franc coin of France.

There is an interesting story of a Timeslip about these coins. In 1978 or so, a British foursome were on an driving holiday of France and needed to stop somewhere for the night in the country and found a nice humble looking hotel.

They were surprised when welcomed in and a man dressed in Old fashioned clothes showed them to their rooms, which strangely had wooden shutters and old beds with feather mattresses, the bathroom was a jug of water and a pail and a basic chain toilet. They had a nice meal by a logfire and found it was strange they ate off Porcelain plates and used silver tableware and the sausages, although delicious had a homemade feel to them, along with electricity which was basic with one bulb in each room and a string in place of a switch.

They slept well and woke up the next morning to a nice breakfast, whilst eating Breakfast, two gendarmes came in and they found it curious their uniforms were very old fashioned and looked like they dated to around 1900 - 1910, after paying their bill, they found it strange that for accommodation and food for 4, it was just 19.50 Francs, they left and continued on their merry way.

The next year they went back to France and remembered this place, but went back to the location and found an overgrown ruin. Asking people in nearby village, they assured them that there was an inn there that closed down between the wars!

Obviously what happened, was they had entered a timeslip that had taken them back to around 1910.

This story seems bizarre, but consider that the French 50c, 1France and 2 Francs of the 1898 - 1918 period looked exactly the same as the 50c, 1 and 5 Francs of the 1960 - 2000 period except one was base metal and the others silver, also some silver 5 Francs of the 1960s were the same size and shape as a 2 Francs.

Had the Innkeeper in the past recognised the coins they paid, he would have not looked twice seeing the familiar olive branches and la Semeuse, finding later that the coins were a different metal (Unless they ahd 1960s silver 5 Francs) and the date of 1911 was in fact 1971!

1910 only have the one