Isle of Man Banknotes

Coin News
July 2008
Volume 45, No.7

Back to Basics

It seems “We’re all doomed” (the words of Private Fraser from Warmington-on-Sea’s Home Guard from Television’s Dad’s Army for those who don’t know) scream at us from the front page of every newspaper and headline and every news website. Rising oil prices, rising food prices, the credit crunch, the housing bubble bursting, unemployment on the rise and a Government that’s seeing its popularity rating plummet almost daily, are all conspiring to ensure that we are, apparently, heading for a huge economic downturn—or so the media would have us believe. Certainly there’s no doubt that things are getting tougher, the fact that it now costs 30 per cent more to fill a tank with diesel than it did this time last year and the fact that our food staples seem to be costing more every week, can only leave us all feeling poorer but I’ll stick my neck out here and say for many of us, at least in our hobby, things really aren’t as bad as they may seem. Most of us won’t be too affected by the credit crunch—many of us are in “late middle-age” and are close to paying off our mortgages if we haven’t done so already. We don’t plan to continue an upward trend on the property ladder and whilst we might have been planning to down-size, we are quite happy to wait until things stabilise a bit. If we are coin collectors the chances are we aren’t on very low incomes and whilst it’s true that we might not all be earning mega-money in the city nor are we struggling to decide whether we should “eat or heat”. The fact that we’ve had enough disposable income to spend on our hobby indicates that we would be considered by many to be “comfortable” and as such we’re not feeling the real effects of the current “crisis” in the same way as some. True, because of rising prices we may well have suddenly found that we have less disposable income than we once had and those collectors on fixed pensions will, I’m sure, be feeling the pinch, but even in their case the current economic downturn doesn’t have to be a disaster and whilst you may not realise it there may be some real plus points in all this for us numismatists.

Home front Heroines

Medal News
June 2008
Volume 46, No.6

Losing its shine

THERE can be no doubt that eBay has opened up our little hobby to a far wider audience. Where once we collectors and dealers simply bought and sold amongst each other and, if we were lucky, “from the family”, now there is a whole world out there that, thanks to the wonders of the internet, we are able to reach, both as potential buyers and, when necessary as sellers too. Suddenly what was once hidden, or popped up occasionally at boot sales, is now readily available as thousands of people realise that their old medals are worth something and sell them via the auction site. And the market place for sellers, once restricted to a few of us die-hards who subscribed to lists or visited shows, is opened up to include not only medal collectors but all those with an interest in local or family history too. eBay has allowed our hobby to be understood by many, many more people than we thought it could ever reach when we started MEDAL NEWS as a magazine in its own right 19 years ago. However, that’s the good side of eBay. There is, sadly, a downside to consider. You all know my feelings about the curse of the “copy” medals that proliferate on the site—one or two less-than-scrupulous individuals happy to destroy our hobby by purveying cheap and nasty rubbish, with no thought for the consequences and an eye only on making a fast buck. However, there is more to worry about than that. The fact that the internet has opened up the hobby has meant that anyone and everyone can become a dealer—and many do just that, inevitably leading to a decline in stock levels of the “proper” dealers. In the past, individuals not in the hobby wouldn’t know who to sell medals to except a dealer; now those same individuals often just hop on their computer and sell that way—meaning that dealers, if they want stock, have to buy from the same pot as the rest of us and, in order to make a living, inevitably have to add a percentage. This increase in “part -time” dealers inevitably leads to some dodgy goings-on,

Portcullis coinage of Elizabeth I

Coin News
June 2008
Volume 45, No.6

Another View

The recent unveiling of the new designs for the reverses of the UK circulating coins has been greeted by a mixed reaction in both the numismatic world and beyond. In the main the response seems to have been much as outlined in this Editorial last month (“A fistful of pennies”, COIN NEWS, May 2008)—that as a design concept the new coins are a triumph (for those of you who don’t know, all seven coins from the penny to the one pound have been redesigned, with the six smaller denominations each making up a part of the overall design of the Royal Shield of Arms and the £1 depicting the shield in its entirety), but perhaps as individual numismatic pieces there are some things that should have been better considered.
My personal concerns about the new coinage (namely that Wales wasn’t represented, that the £2 coin now looked out of place and that there were no denominational numerals on the coins) seem to have been the ones echoed by most correspondents to this magazine and indeed in debate further afield in the “general” media. The Royal Mint has responded to these criticisms and whilst I don’t fully agree with their sentiments their replies do make some sense.