News Archive (2008)

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International News - November 2008

Currency Conversions Keep Your Mind Sharp
By David C. Harper, World Coin News

It would be far easier for all of us if the world’s currencies would convert into other world currencies in even numbers, wouldn’t it?

How convenient it would be for all collectors to mentally compare values from country to country if the relationships between currencies were easily calculated in your head.

If market tops are characterized by frenzied buyers paying any price to get in on the action, then activity in the coin business indicates we are still not near one in the current gold market.

SINGAPORE: The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has launched the 2009 Year of the Ox Almanac Coins set.

The coins are part of a series designed by Xu Yunfei, a designer from the Shanghai Mint.

THERE'S a worldwide run on gold coins.

Even as the price of the precious metal itself comes under pressure along with commodities like oil and copper, people around the world are demanding so many of the valuable coins that government mints are having difficulty filling orders.

United States Mint Deputy Director Andrew Brunhart today unveiled designs for the 2009 Abraham Lincoln Commemorative Silver Dollar during the annual Dedication Day Ceremony at Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

In April 2008 new reverse designs were introduced for all United Kingdom coins up to the £1 coin. These will eventually replace the designs that have been in use since the decimalisation of the coinage nearly 40 years ago.

Three 700-year-old coins which were found in a field have been declared treasure by a coroner at Flint.

The silver pennies date back to between 1307 and 1314, to the reigns of both Edward I and his son Edward II.

New Zealand has announced a new annual series of legal tender coins to be issued over the next three years to both celebrate and promote conservation of New Zealand's iconic kiwi - that chicken-sized, endangered, half-blind bird that can't fly, has hairy feathers, nostrils in the end of its nose and lays the largest egg in the world for its body size.

Metal flows into die’s damaged areas

Among coinage struck in the first century of the U.S. Mint's full-scale operations, beginning in 1793, it is not uncommon to encounter coins struck from dies that rusted because of improper storage.

Some 3,000 years ago, the Shang Dynasty (1700-1027 BCE) in China was using cowries as money. Toward the end of that era, the first coins appeared, except that they weren't the round coins we're familiar with.