jgenn

"Want" coins are visible to others that look at your custom set including pictures and comments. It can be used as a way to show coins that you have but have not sent in for certification (especially if you have a rare or scarce coin that you know would not get a straight grade)..

It is so important to track the financial details of all coin purchases. The US Internal Revenue Service has a category to handle the capital gains or losses of collectibles, such as coins. You must be able to establish the cost basis for your collectible in order to calculate the gain or loss when you or your heirs sell. You are always required to declare gains, even from "hobby" profits. You do need to understand the regulations in order to claim losses, and with all the buyer and seller fees involved that you can claim in your cost basis you may need to claim a loss.

This is not a genuine issue from the Mexico City mint -- the historical record shows that the assayers (identified by their initials) were not employed for that function during that date. Forgers make dies from copies of obverses and reverses and will sometimes use mismatched pairs to generate their fake coins. Do not be fooled if you can determine that the coin is a silver alloy. Unless you can determine that it is 90% silver, you can be certain that it is a forgery, likely made for trade with Asia for its bullion value. If you are interested in more details I suggest you buy the book by Robert Gurney "Counterfeit Portrait Eight-Reales: The Un-real Reales (Counterfeit Eight-Reales)"

Your gold coin prize was wonderful but your wife's prize was way more interesting, in my opinion. Congrats to you both!

Thank you for adding those details! I only collect crown size coins so I tend to focus on those but of course all issues are of interest

One aspect of monetary reform taken by almost all nations was to change the subdivision of a currency into units of 10 and 100. The main benefit was to simplify calculations for accounting purposes and was often undertaken to align with trading partners. Nations often changed the size and weight of their coins as part of monetary reforms and sometimes changed the name of their currency. Typically, these changes allowed the issuing authorities to reduce the amount of precious metal without the commensurate change in official value. For world crowns in the 19th Century, many nations settled on 25 grams and 37 mm for their largest silver coins. An important standard was set in 1865 when France, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland formed the Latin Monetary Union. Decimalization occurred in many of the former Spanish colonies in the Americas in the middle of the 19th century as these new nations moved away from the 27 gram 8 reales standard to 25 grams and several of these nations joined the Latin Monetary Union to facilitate trade with Europe. In Venezuela, decimalization started with the peso in 1843 although no silver coins of that denomination were struck. In 1872 the currency was renamed to the venezolano with the subdivision of 100 centavos. The silver venezolano was issued for just one year in 1876. Venezuela joined the Latin Monetary Union in 1879 and changed the currency to the bolivar, with the crown sized silver coin issued as 5 bolivares. Here is my example of the short lived venezolano, the first silver crown of Venezuela. 25 grams, 37 mm and 90% silver. Mintage of only 35,000 and struck at the Paris mint. ~jack

Well your photos are as tiny as the actual coins, which helps explain why setting aside the proper space for full legends is difficult to do.

Yes, please continue to use the journal to post your valuable information on the coinage of Iceland. Although you may not think there are many people that view the journals section of this site, your posts will be indexed by Google so anyone searching on keywords in your post should be able find it.

LOL that 2 is wearing a tiara from a leftover serif. Great catch!

Thank you Gary! It is a rather humble set, compared to my Mexico City type set, for example. However, I did make some effort to take decent photos and tried to write something of interest about each coin and where I acquired it from. This is perhaps my one set where all of the coins were purchased and submitted as raw coins. I appreciate that the NGC award selection team has broad criteria in their choices.

Congratulations, Chris! I think the custom set awards are some of the most prestigious awards that NGC gives out. Well done!

Another excellent post, Gary. I have been toying with the idea of posting my ideas about why we don't have any great, new art on our current coins. As you mentioned in your entry, the great artists taught the next generation. Did Laura Gardin Fraser have any notable apprentices/students?

I like that photo! You look relaxed and happy and the coin display in the background is an awesome touch. And you are so right that active collecting spurs my journal posting, too.

Good hunting with rebuilding your East German collection, Tom.

At F12 it's certainly no gem but the nice thing about this design is that there are no fine details that get lost with heavy circulation.

There may not be a true silver crown of an independent Ireland. The closest that I have uncovered would be the silver crown, presumably issued by the Catholic Confederacy of Kilkenny, in 1642-43, although the few examples that appear in auction sales appear to be less than 25g in weight. These coins are also quite rare. The next closest example of an Irish silver crown, which I was able to acquire, might just be the "Ormond" crown of the same time (1643-1644), issued by the Earl of Ormond, James Butler, commander of the royalist army in Ireland. At least it is a silver crown sized coin (my example is 29.71g), most likely minted in Dublin, and during the time when there was an independent government that controlled two-thirds of the island. This brief period of independence would end in 1653 with the occupation and annexation of Ireland by the Commonwealth of England. Obverse design, crowned CR for King Charles I. Reverse V with a small S above for denomination of 5 shillings.

My attendance at the Fairfax Coin Club was spotty after the move from Reston to Vienna and went to zero during the pandemic. I am hoping this year will be better.

Here are two '22s from my collection.

For coins like these examples, that are legitimately scarce as well as conditionally rare, reasonable price is whatever you can afford. It could be a decade or more for equally nice examples to appear on the market.. But who knows. The only higher grade example (MS-63) of the ducato appeared just last year.

I had to upload photos with Edge because my preferred browser, Firefox, does not seem to be supported anymore.

To paraphrase Forest Gump, coin collecting is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna find. I find this especially true of the Heritage weekly world coin auctions. Sorting out all of the consignments that Heritage gets into their various auction formats must take quite a bit of time and when it comes to world coins, I doubt if all the people involved are experts in all coins across all of coin minting history. Still, I am surprised to find the occasional scarce variety pop up in the weekly auctions. Late last year I found a scarce pillar dollar, one of the difficult date/assayer combinations in the 1760-1771 Mexico City 8 reales series (Gilboy R2, 25-50 pieces known). This one is a straight graded AU with good eye appeal that replaces a rather ugly details graded one that took me years to find. In a weekly coin auction this year I found a really special coin that just happens to be related to the pillar dollars that I focus on. And it's a pretty important coin in general for those of us interested in coin imagery (as in the images depicted on coins as opposed to coin photography). 1684 ducato of the Kingdom of Naples (and Sicily). The obverse shows the bust of Charles II, ruler of the Spanish Empire which, at this time, included the Southern portion of Italy and the island of Sicily. The reverse has the legend VNVS NON SVFFICIT (one is not enough) which was previously seen on medals and printed works of art as VNVS NON SVFFICIT ORBIS (one world is not enough), and depicts a pillar surmounted by a crown and two hemispheres of the globe. The initials on the reverse are for the mint official Andrea Giovane and assayer F. Antonio Ariani. On the obverse, the initials under the bust are for the engraver Giovanni Montemein. Earlier depictions of the two globes theme are not as geographically representative of the New and Old Worlds as we see on this coin. The earliest example that I have found is from a medal commemorating the union of the French King Francis II and Mary, Queen of the Scots from no earlier than 1558. Another example is a medal of Francis I, with a date of 1515 but likely produced in the 17th Century, showing one earthly globe juxtaposed with a celestial globe. It seems unlikely that Francisco Hernández Escudero was unaware of these precedents when he designed the iconic pillar dollar in 1729, a coin that would become so successful as a trade dollar across the globe. ~jack

I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to learning about the specifics of actual coin production. Thanks for your comment!

Thank you all for your comments One of the great things that I love about coins is the history you learn when you take the time to research the places and times. In this case, I came across a nice article at the US State Department website on Italian reunification. One paragraph was very enlightening in describing the political and social aftereffects of the conquests across Europe of Napoleon I. "The period of French invasion and occupation was important in many ways. It introduced revolutionary ideas about government and society, resulting in an overthrow of the old established ruling orders and the destruction of the last vestiges of feudalism. The ideals of freedom and equality were very influential. Also of consequence, the concept of nationalism was introduced, thus sowing the seeds of Italian nationalism throughout most parts of the northern and central Italian peninsula. "

No, I'm not talking about this year which I can only call another strange year, but rather, the year 1860. In trying to broaden my Silver Dollars of '60 custom set, I researched the silver dollar-like coins issued from European nations in 1860 and I believe there are only two. By this time, thalers had shrunk to 33mm and 18.52g so they no longer fit my definition of silver dollar size! Having already acquired a nice 20 reales of Spain (38mm, 26.291g), I was stuck with finding the 5 lire of the Kingdom of Sardinia (37mm, 25g), a coin with a mintage of only 5,044. That is one hard year! But, why such a small mintage? In 1859 the Kingdom of Sardinia, also known as Piedmont-Sardinia had launched an effort to reunify the Italian states and successfully concluded several military campaigns with their French ally against Austria. In 1860 the Kingdom proceeded to gain support from other Northern Italian States through plebiscite and achieved decisive military victories against the papal army and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Warfare is expensive so my guess is that silver stocks were depleted leading to the low mintage of coins for general circulation. The political and military successes of 1860 led to the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy with the King of Sardinia, Vittorio Emanuele II, it's first ruler of a united Italy since the 6th century. Clearly, for those that benefited from a unified Italy, 1860 was a great year. I finally tracked down an example of the silver dollar-like coin from the Kingdom of Sardinia, dated 1860. This coin was minted in the principle city of Piedmont, Turin, as denoted by the eagle head mintmark. Turin was the capital of the Kingdom of Italy until 1865. ~jack