ColonialCoinsUK

Congratulations on completing the Set Lots of these 'modern' Sets from the start of the 20th century until ~1970's are surprising difficult to complete and even more so in high grade. I seem to have given up and am settling for typesets

Very nice coin, something about the colour of gold that you can't beat - it just looks valuable

Great medal! I have recently seen a documentary on the Panama canal - fascinating, and it would be great to see it in person. Somewhere (?) I have a banknote from the Aguan Navigation and Improvement Company in Honduras from when they were raising funds to have the canal there. Obviously they lost to Panama

Many congratulations to you and Mike and all of the NGC and PMG winners this year. There are some really interesting sets in there - more fascinating areas to learn about

'I'm finding these type sets with different designs more fun to build than long-run date sets that all have the same design.' @Revenant Medals and banknotes and typesets for coins certainly have this advantage, which is great, but a complete date run of one denomination is a real and different challenge - I will complete my sixpence die numbers I was often outbid for some coins which then appeared on a certain dealers website along with an email highlighting 'a coin I may be interested in' was available. For the banknotes it seems to be 3 dealers rather than just one Medals do seem to disappear into collections though. 'There will be no mercy. ' I am sure you will be victorious

I have really only had this problem with utility companies who sometimes just will not except that there are better deals elswhere. Here in the UK there are probably only a couple of 'bullion/collectable coins' companies that appear to be guilty of this and I have to say I have made sure not to buy from them - there are some long threads on dealing with them on some Forums

@Revenant Great pics - one of the first coins I bought as I expanded my British coins to British colonial - cost 20p at the time! Seems to be the only date I had

Value does seem to be the thing that interests them the most but the history is slowly creeping up on them, but it will be when they ask how to grade coins I know I will have cracked it.

It has been a while but my graded Napoleon typeset is now complete Congratulations must go to @Mac5 who reached 100% first. Next challenge will be a Custom Set and will be one coin per mint, only about a third of the way there so that may take some time as most of my Typeset are from Paris - mintmark A. A project for the next few generations will be the Sets for Italy, Spain, Westphalia, Holland and all the tokens and medals before even attempting date runs. As we don't have any grand children yet I need to have a word with the kids!

Great to see Sam on his feet!

So sorry to hear this, praying for you all. We have a family member with epilepsy - modern treatments have been very effective and no one would know without looking at the paperwork. The biggest inconvenience (and it is here in the UK) is that Sam will probably just need his driving licence renewed every few years. Very best wishes

I too have had numerous issues with couriers - in the middle of one dispute at the moment as it appears they can't read, or answer emails, or the phone At least one of the others has stopped emailing all the info about my packages to random email addresses and actually sends it to me now! Having said all that, everything has eventually turned up even if it is a few months late

Starship Troopers was my first thought reading your title - appalling tactics in dealing with the 'bugs' and there is no way I would be trying to get citzenship by signing up to that(not the way they do it in the book though!). Often it is the stories behind the items that is the real interest and is what captures people's imagination and your sets certainly do that and it still surprises me that the vast majority of such stories are not actually recorded anywhere. Maybe people assume all the information etc is already documented somewhere in which case they are "sure of a big surprise" (not a film )

It would be great to have the information on the label It is a known variety and in the standard Gadoury reference for French coins, Monnasies Francaises, so it may be possible.

Quite a while has passed since I added a coin to my collection - there are plenty to choose from out there but the prices being acheived at auction are now getting really silly, particularly for quality examples of almost anything. Despite this situation it will come as no surprise that the coin in question was Napoleonic - a 1808 10 centimes from the Paris mint. Why would I do this when, it is the most common issue, and I already have a couple of high grade examples?? (details on my Registry set). This mintage is actually made up of two varieities - the normal one and the 'upside down' one. The latter is struck en medaille rather than the usual coin alignment and is by far the much rarer of the two - maybe a few% of the production at best. For years I have been looking at all the 1808A's that have appeared at auction in the hope of finding a good one, I had identified just a few but these had seen extensive circulation and would only grade as Fine at best, so not great and I let them go. Recently a quality example appeared and it was already graded. Such a variety is often missed, and it wasn't recognised on the label either - unfortunately the auction house realised what it was and so I decided to just pay up Would NGC now recognise this well established variety? There are also clear varieties for some of the other 10 centime issues and I also check for all of those.

Makes sense - now you just have to find 'early strikes'

Sorry to hear of your loss - fortunately memories don't really disappear and nice reminders are everywhere. Many congratulations on the little one and the job. My kids had a giant world map on the wall and I would buy bulk world coins lots and they would stick them on the map - bit difficult for countries that no longer exist This covered a bit of geography, a bit of history and all based on coins - they still pick dates and commemorative issues out of their change!

There appears to have been a hoard discovered of these 1/4 reales which Heritage disposed of over many sales - 100's of MS examples which meant I could get one easily. Interesting, it would be great to see Quetzals flying about - the only green bird I tend to see here is a woodpecker, no fancy tail feathers though

As mentioned in earlier Journal entries on Napoleonic coinage the impact of this period was not restricted to Europe, but global. Of particular interest is the collpase of the Spanish Empire in the America's with one country after another gaining their independence from Spain. For Guatemala this happened in 1821 when it became part of the new Central American Republic so my tiny Ferdinand VII silver 1/4 Real was an example of the last Spanish coinage struck. This period only lasted a few years until the Central American Civil War broke out (1826-1829) as the constituent territories sought their own paths. Over the next few years various factions, seemly pro and anti the Aycinena family, most notably Carrera, attempted to seize control of the region with the Concordat of 1854 finally providing a formal link between the State and the Catholic church. The 1890s not only saw the US take a larger interest in Latin America, with increased business activity, but also the first civilian President for many decades - Cabrera, revolution again saw a change in the 1920s. In time another military dictator arose - Jorge Ubico (1931-1944) which again culminated in revolution and the installation of Arevalo as President. The military regained power in 1951 and introduced many policies, which caused much suffering for the population, leading to outbreak of the Guatemalan Civil War in 1960 - which went on until 1996! Election of Portillo brought a degree of peace to the country however reform of the whole system was required and, at times, this was far from easy. Dealing with embedded corruption lead to the most recent change with both Morales (2015) and Giammattei (2020) being elected to address this specific issue. Given all the dramatic changes over the last 200 years it is no surprise that coins have changed from the gold and silver of the Spanish Empire to the base metal issues of today. The late 19th century saw the introduction of banknotes (in pesos) which changed to the Quetzal in the 1920's. Unlike many neighbouring countries the currency has been surpringly consistent for most of this period so I couldn't resist adding to my collection the 'paper' commemorative note released in 2021, thus representing the lifetime of independent Guatemala. Now to fill in all the gaps

Surprising to see this extent on a modern coin - attached are cracks on my 10 cents from Napoleonic Italy. Not only was the quality of the work at the Italian mints not great the people didn't like this coin as it was too thin and fragile so it didn't last long!

Hope things are all OK for Samuel. MS69 looks like a great coin - graded sets of modern coins are a real challenge, idendified the next set yet?? Best wishes to all

Items from most places are no problem (Estonia is very slow for some reason and seems to detour all around Europe) but a very common courier used by major US auction houses seems to be very variable - I can only think it depends on whether they actually read the paperwork or assume what it says. The latest was two different purchases which were shipped on the same day from the same State, the first arrived in about a week, the second is at nearly a month and the paperwork was the same!

Glad they made it - hope you can all agree on the potential grades As my memory is not what it was I now have a 'waiting for' list on my phone . It doesn't seem to matter where in the world things are coming from delivery seems +/- 3 months or so - I often get deliveries from California, using the same courier and method, one source usually takes 3 days and the second usually takes a month. Having said that items from the other side of the world are often faster and cheaper shipping costs than from down the road!

Sounds like a real challenge! UK coinage doesn't seem to change its design very often either and for the most recent issues it turned out that they too have many varieties and people have only just started to document these, starting with the £1 coins. Is there an actual catalog for Venezuelan coins or is it just the online versions such as Numista? and do you think these are complete or close? For some of the banknotes I am adding to my collection the latest catalogs seem to be from the 1970's, assuming you can even get them, which I suppose is better than the Napoleonic medals which are from the 1920's or earlier.

Good to hear that attendence is up - coin clubs are very very few and not something we really have in the UK which is a shame. Online groups seem much more common, as is a focus on more modern issues, meaning my interests in old world issues is a bit odd