News & Blog

Year set Record-breaker

Posted on Thu, 22 October 2015 by Alyson Thomas - Coin News

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A Change is Good

By the time you read this, Token Publishing Ltd will be on the verge of taking over new premises. After nearly 28 years in Honiton and environs (17 in Orchard House) we are moving! We aren’t actually moving very far away—just down the A30 to Exeter—but mentally it’s huge. We are partly making the move because the three directors (John, Carol and Philip) all live nearer Exeter than Honiton now and it will just make life easier, but also partly because it is just time. You have all heard the saying that “a change is as good as a rest” and we feel it’s time to make a change, no matter how small. Don’t worry, this is very much a change for us—we aren’t suddenly changing the magazine radically; we aren’t going digital only, bi-monthly, black and white or anything silly like that, or indeed changing any of our wonderful “Token Team” who we are very pleased to say are all making the extra 18 mile journey to join us in Southernhay, a beautiful Georgian part of Exeter untouched by the Luftwaffe bombs of the Baedeker raids in 1942, to stay with us—but that doesn’t mean there may not be some changes. And that is where you come in. Over the years we have been successfully producing a coin magazine where others have failed for three main reasons. Firstly, we like to think we publish what you the readers want, secondly, we are very lucky to have some excellent writers who help produce that content. Lastly, we try our best to actually listen to what you all want from your favourite coin magazine and do our best to act and react accordingly. Over the next few months you may well see small changes to items like the “Market Scene”, maybe a new column or two—things like that, nothing drastic, very much “steady as she goes” but changes nonetheless. These, coupled with some digital changes we are working on (look out for “Coin News Extra” coming soon) will, we hope continue to give our readers what they want.
Which brings me to this “Comment”. Over the years I’ve covered every conceivable numismatic topic I can think of. Some months when there is something important happening such as the dateless 20p, the Olympic programme, polymer notes, changing effigies, etc., then the “Comment” is easy to write—other months not so much and I often feel that I am repeating what I said last year, last decade. Certainly some things bear repeating, and we have a new generation of collectors who may not have read my ramblings ten years ago. But nonetheless, if we are changing some things we may as well ask whether others need tinkering with too; and so I throw this back at you and ask these questions: firstly, are you happy reading this “comment” every month or would you prefer to just see the small paragraph style Editor’s piece you see in some other magazines? If you do like my meanderings then that’s great—but what topics would you like to see covered? Is there something I haven’t discussed? And lastly, have you ever thought about writing this piece? Penning a comment on the state of the market or a topical numismatic news piece? Who knows a “guest” comment slot maybe something that we can look at in the future. All these things are open for discussion and anything is possible. We are going to use the forthcoming move to look at these potential changes and who knows what will come of that? Be assured of one thing though, the core values, the key ingredients of the magazine will stay the same, you don’t need to worry about that and, no, we are certainly not going digital only—our digital magazine is very popular but we all prefer a paper copy and know many of you do too. The digital option is there for those who want it but it will not replace the printed version just yet! And, of course, even if we do make changes we can always change back again if you don’t like what we’ve done. If “new Coke” can do it so can we!
We will publish full details of our move, contact address, ‘phone number, etc., next month and on our website www.tokenpublishing.com.