Which Era Is Your Favourite One For Collecting British Coins And Why?

Like most of us, I'm sure, my primary areas of interest have evolved considerably over the last five decades. I've worked through a Liz-to-Liz type set (minors and crowns only), and when that got out of hand expense-wise (think Cromwell), I downsized my aspirations a bit and completed a Victoria-to-the-present type set...everything but patterns. I sort of had a head start on that one, having acquired a gorgeous PF63 Gothic Crown in trade as an eighth-grader to build around. Managed to keep upgrading to the point where I had only key dates for each type and the whole set was unc or better. After using that as a down payment on a nice house, I got interested in the tokens of "The British World," and Jerry Remick's exhaustive catalog became my bible. Got into Conders bigtime too, for a few years.

For the last 15 years or so, my sole focus has been the copper and silver tokens of 1811-1820 as catalogued by Davis, Withers, and Dalton, and as described/contextualized in several essential books by Bell, Mays, Selgin, Whiting, Wager, Withers again, and others. In the last quarter of the 18th century the dawn of mechanization became possible with folks like Watt and Boulton developing engines and gearing systems, but the "Regency Period" I collect adopted and expanded on that with the first wave of industrialization in Britain, growing the economy exponentially while decisively moving it away from the agrarian/manorial system it had been the previous century. Just to even participate, communities, towns, banks, merchants, and tradesmen -- even poorhouses! -- all had to come up with coinage of their own to keep the economy going and growing with very little in the way of legal tender provided by the Crown.

Many of the tokens actually illustrate the new work of factories, mines, etc., that didn't even exist fifty years earlier. Just one example here, a tuppence from Rugeley in Staffordshire shows off the very sophisticated (for 1815) large-scale air-moving machinery produced by Edward Barker.

Withers 965, Davis Staffs 93 (41mm, 40g)

There are plenty more where that came from!

Nice token. I hadn't thought about these later tokens much before. (All the tokens I have are earlier). The 1811-1820 tokens are interesting in that they shouldn't have been necessary after Matthew Boulton began producing pennies and twopennies from 1797 or, indeed, after the 1816 recoinage. New laws had also halted the production of tokens and evasions after they became very political in the 1790s.

It seems the resurgence in the 1810s was to take advantage of the increased price of copper. They melted down the undervalued government issues to make tokens containing their face value in copper, pocketing the difference, rather than producing tokens because there were no government issues (as was the case in the 1650s and 1790s). And of course, they still saw a marketing opportunity, even if they couldn't slate the government anymore. But private tokens were banned outright in 1817, except those of Poor Law Unions, but even these ended by 1820.

I chose Victorian, even though I collect all coins, for several reasons:
1) I love the Victorian era and there are still lots of Victorian era buildings, industrial marvels, and items that are still with us today.
2) The plump (OK - fat) Queen Victoria is one of my favourite monarchs and her long lived genes are probably still causing Charles anxiety that he'll never get his bum on the throne.
3) As Princetane said, the coinage was in use in Australia. As a metal detectorist Vic coins are the most frequently found non-Australian coins.
4) There are still plenty of Victorian (including the colonies) coins that you can collect without being a millionaire.

I also love the Victorian era coins, but I have selected sterling era as that is where I am collecting now.
Already I have collected date runs on most of the 1968 onwards decimals coins, with only a few holes to fill,
so now I will work backward to 1900 and hopefully fill the many holes I have there.

Steve :)

I'm really enjoying this discussion.

I collect many areas of world coins but have been paying more attention to the British series the last few years. As I had essentially finished a Victorian to pre-decimal type set decades ago, I have been paying more attention to the Tudor, Stuart, and Georgian issues. I really like the Commonwealth era coinage and history, but they are so expensive that I've only been able to garner a few.

And when available and within my budget, I pick up kings of the pre-Tudor period.

I don't do Maundy myself at all, but I do get some passing through my hands. Single coins can often be bought for £15 to £30 over here, but matching sets command much higher prices. I guess in Oz they turn up much less often.

Tom Goodheart, love that display and those coins are delicious

David - I agree, I have a lot of the post 1968 UK stuff (50ps, old pounds, mint sets and lots of the ebay rare ½p and 1p coins dated 1971 (Give over, I know its a bubble and these coins have no value above face if that).

Right now I have good collections of Farthings, Halfpence, Pennies, Florins and Halfcrowns but have not done much with 3d, 6d or shilling yet.

My goal will be to get all back to 1816 the year of the recoinage and perfectly round machine made coins.

Just to revive a dead thread (Hopefully some newer members can choose too).
I have moved heavily into shillings and unlike the Florin and Halfcrown have just been inundated with examples from all eras except possibly the early Stuart one. Thanks to shillings I have a near complete date run back to 1912 and many Victorian ones. I even have a reasonable number of Georgian and late Stuart coins and my first two ever Tudor coins.

So yes the shilling is definitely proving to be one of the most enjoyable and easy coins to get!