Civil war money

Your collection and you AT the recent Midland Coin Fair on March 8, we met a number of people who told us they were just starting out in the hobby. Hard on the heels of the London Coin Fair where we saw so many children and young people (see last month’s “Editorial Comment”) getting interested in coins, it was very heartening to see that the future of our hobby looks more and more secure. What was particularly interesting was hearing the reasons why these newcomers to numismatics were getting interested in coins, and they seemed to fall into four distinct groups. The first and largest group of “newbies” were there to buy silver and gold, they were looking to buy to invest; they had previously had their money elsewhere but had been watching the recent precious metal price increases with interest and had decided that a market that was seeing such activity was one worth watching. Intriguingly, this group itself fell into two subsets, subsets actually diametrically opposed to each other. On the one hand, there were those who had always viewed gold and silver as a safe and solid market with low risk, a bit boring and not for them but who were now attracted to the recent market volatility—as one new buyer said to me there are very few funds that have given 50 per cent profits in six months (a sovereign was £620 back in September, they were selling at £950 at Midland). The other subset were those looking for a safe haven for their capital, attracted by the no Capital Gains Tax on British legal tender, the fact that you can physically hold what you own and the fact that the stock markets look to be in for a bumpy ride with everything going on in Iran at the moment. In times of uncertainty gold (and silver) has always been king— such, it seems, is the case now. The second group of new collectors were the new issue enthusiasts, despite few of the Royal Mint’s 50ps and £2 coins going into circulation these days, the passion for them doesn’t seem to have dimmed and there were plenty of people out and- about looking for the new coins, albeit now in packs rather than in their change. The third group were those interested in history who are drifting to coins as a tangible, affordable way to actually own a piece of the era in which they are so fascinated; for example we spoke with two classicists from Warwick University who were looking for Roman coins (one of whom was already a collector and was trying to persuade the other that she should take an interest too) and an Egyptologist who was looking for anything related to his area of expertise. The final group was a particularly interesting one, they were the people who were “collectors”, they’d been “collectors” for years and had, over that time formed collections of all sorts of different things from postcards to stamps to medals to watches (the fact there was a clock and watch show at the Motorcycle Museum on the same day as the coin show undoubtedly boosted the numbers of horologists through the door) and now they were looking for their next subject. This inevitably got me thinking: we are all collectors at heart and many of us collect things other than medals. Personally I collect postcards produced by a particular artist (and his original paintings when I can get them, his name is Sydney Endacott and he lived and worked in Exeter in the early 20th century, hence my interest) and single-cask whisky (best not to ask). In addition to coins, COIN NEWS editor Carol also collects postcards, French banknotes and, since the February edition of our sister publication MEDAL NEWS, she has also started collecting Gloops medals (see “News & Views” this month for more on this). So, this brings me to the point of this editorial, is your collection limited to just coins or have you too been bitten by the “bug” and are in fact a collector of many a different thing? For some time, we have been running the occasional article entitled “My Collection and me” but recently we’ve been wondering why we should limit the subject to just coins—wouldn’t it be great to find out what other weird and wonderful collections are out there? So why not drop us a line, write a paragraph or two, and tell us what else you’re interested in; if anyone has a collection more esoteric than Country Life magazine publications illustrated by Lionel Edwards (another of Carol’s passions) then we’d love to hear about it! Of course, we’d equally like to hear about your coin collection and why you started in the first place—either will do, just get writing! Phil Mussell