Albert Medals of Malta

Medal News
May 09
Vol 47 No.5

You are not alone…

FIRST things first — a big thank you to all dealers and collectors who made it to a very successful inaugural MEDAL NEWS Britannia show on March 29. We had over 300 people there throughout the day and I think everyone who attended were pleased with the result. We’ve already had a raft of bookings for the next fair (November 22) both from dealers who came along this time and others who hadn’t stalled out but were keen to “get in on the action” next time around. Comments from attendees such as “just like the good old days” and “I haven’t been elbowed like that since the 80s” show that the collectors were impressed too!
That all said the point of this Comment isn’t just one of self-praise — yes, the fair was a great success, yes, we’ll be doing it again and yes, we are very glad that we have been instrumental in keeping a medal fair in the Capital — especially now the OMRS Convention has taken a different route and the “public” per se won’t be able to attend (see MEDAL NEWS, April 2009 for more details of that). However, there was more to Britannia than simply a very good medal fair — indeed a number of the most positive comments have come not from dealers or successful buyers (although both groups also declared themselves well satisfied) but rather from collectors who actually didn’t buy very much at all — if anything. It seemed that those who came to look, to chat to fellow collectors to be “part of something” enjoyed the day just as much as those who walked away with a treasured addition to their collection and the acquisition of yet another group was not the sole motivation behind attending.
One thing those of us who attend the fairs regularly tend to forget is that for many this hobby is a solitary one, we aren’t part of a team, we don’t attend huge “swap meets”, don’t share our passion with our mates down the pub and don’t tend to share our interests that much with our families. The reasons for all this are obvious — there simply aren’t that many collectors around for huge meetings to ever happen, we don’t want to start talking about our expensive collections to all and sundry (who knows who may be listening) and let’s be honest we’d be horrified if our better halves did take too much of an interest — they’d know how much we were spending then!

Sun Face Radiates

Coin News
May 09
Vol 46 No. 5

Forging ahead

AS we go to press another report on the prevalence of fake £1 coins in circulation has come to light. The findings of the report, this time coming from Willings, a company which makes machines to check coins for businesses and other organisations, apparently show that upwards of £73 million worth of forgeries could be out there. According to the BBC story into the report, car parking firms, vending machine operators, etc., have been sending coins to the company for checking and they have discovered that the percentage of fakes is far higher than, in fact over double, the Royal Mint’s estimate of last year.

In the last quarter of 2008 the Mint removed some 270,000 from circulation and it was estimated, from that, that 1 in 50 of the £1 coins in circulation was a forgery (see COIN NEWS, Editor’s Comment, November 2008). Now apparently Willings are claiming that as many as 5 per cent, that’s 1 in 20, are “wrong ’uns” and hysteria has once again broken out amongst the media who are claiming that “something must be done” and that with such a huge amount of money in fact not money at all, the country’s economy is in far worse shape than was ever suspected. Of course this is all sensationalism and it will die down very quickly, but numismatically the issue still remains—there are a great number of fake £1 coins out there and something really should be done.

Just how many fakes are in circulation will never be known, everyone’s just guessing, it’s the only way. But the fact that a company that specialises in checking coins for car parks and vending machine companies has estimated the number higher than the Royal Mint should come as no surprise.

London 2012—A celebration of Britain

Coin News
April 2009
Vol 46 No. 4

Counting down with coins

WHILST the news is depressing us daily with talk of doom and gloom in recessionary Britain, we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that it was only four years ago that the country was riding on a high of optimism following the announcement that London was to host the 2012 Olympics. It’s a trifle worrying, here in 2009, that we’ll be holding a traditionally mind-blowingly expensive event on the back of the biggest economic downturn for decades. But no matter, host it we will and hopefully we’ll get it right. Of course in the UK we always seem to leave things to the last minute—look at the Wembley Stadium debacle or the Millennium Dome—we’d only known for 2,000 years that the Year 2000 would be upon us one day, so the fact that it seemed to come as a surprise to those organising the celebrations was a surprise in itself. We all know that come 2011, indeed early 2012, the papers will be full of stories about stadia being unfinished, transport links behind schedule and planned regeneration projects on the back burner—it’s the way we seem to do things and so it is a nice surprise to find the Royal Mint actually ahead of the game with their Olympic coin programme. Olympic coinage has a long history and the host nation is always expected to lead the way, a challenge the Mint has risen to a very un-British three years before the Games.
Billed as “Britain’s biggest ever commemorative coin programme in honour of the momentous 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games” there are actually three strings to this particular bow. The first is the Countdown to London 2012—a series of four £5 coins issued in limited numbers in gold, silver and cupro-nickel at a rate of one design a year for the next four years. The first depicts a rather stylised pair of swimmers with the number 3 superimposed upon them; one assumes that next year’s coin will feature another sport and a number 2; 2011 will feature a different sport and a “1” and that the coin for 2012 will either have large “0”, the word “go” written upon it or depict a starting pistol or similar—hence the “countdown” of the programme’s title. The consensus in the COIN NEWS office is that whilst the idea is a sound one the design is a little too “radical” for our tastes—but that’s just us, we’ll leave our reader ’s to make up their own minds.