Excerpt from the Journal of Antiques and Collectibles

Hawaii has always been an exciting place in my imagination. When I was a pre-teen, I was collecting coins, stamps, and old books. In those days, there seemed to be rare stuff all over the place. I would dig through piles of old books and came up with treasure after treasure for 10¢.

By the time I was 12, I often could spend as much as $5 or $10 for a coin, stamps, or a book. For me, the trio was a natural to collect. I found A New Voyage, Round the World In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, and 1771 Undertaken by Order of His Present Majesty, Performed by James Cook, In the Ship Endeavour. The title goes on, but the really rare things about this book is not only the subject matter, but the fact that it was printed in New York by James Rivington in 1774. Books printed in America before the Revolution are rare, and this subject was very popular.

Four years later in 1778, Cook discovered Hawaii and was killed there shortly thereafter. For a few dollars I had purchased Cook’s Voyages With an Account of His Life by A. Kipps published in Philadelphia in 1838. This was followed by History of the Sandwich Islands With an Account of the American Mission Established There in 1820. This rare little book was printed in Philadelphia in 1831 by the American Sunday School Union.

The coming of the Missionaries doomed the Hawaiians. Soon most of the Missionaries and their families spread fatal western diseases that all but wiped out the Hawaiian population. Then the men of God and their families grabbed most of the land, and eventually overthrew Hawaii’s last ruler, Queen Lilinokalani in 1893 with the help of U.S. Marines from a U.S. warship in the harbor at Honolulu. Read Full Article

By Tom Sebring for Numismaster

Some of the most popular topics for books and movies are those romantic scoundrels known as pirates. Ravaging the seas, looting helpless merchant ships, they spread fear throughout the Caribbean and the Atlantic Coast. While pirates operated earlier in the New World, the most intensive period of piracy was roughly 1690-1725, known as “The Golden Age Of Piracy.”

A list of notorious pirates would be very long, but some of the best known are Bartholomew Roberts, John Avery, Edward England, Edward Teach (Blackbeard), William Kidd and Henry Morgan.

This article reviews the pirate culture, the economics of piracy, and describes a few of the best known buccaneers and their depredations. Also analyzed in detail are the kind of coins the marauding pirates would have encountered and the recent excavation of two pirate ships.

By Jeff Starck for COIN WORLD

Peso coinage, found in areas of former Spanish influence and control, offers a wealth of opportunity for the adventurous world coin collector.

One can currently travel through Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Uruguay and pay using only pesos. Though the nations don’t share a common currency, their currencies share a common name.

The list of the countries that once used the peso denomination is even longer, a veritable map of Central and South America. Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain and Venezuela all, at one time, issued peso-denominated coinage.

Creating a collection of peso coinage from each issuing country, past or present, could prove to be an exciting and educational endeavor.

By Jeff Starck COIN WORLD

A crown might be something a monarch wears, or a specifically British coin denomination, but to world coin collectors a “crown” is much more.

Crown-sized coins are generally those silver coins measuring in a range from 33 to 50 millimeters in diameter and weighing about 20 to 30 grams in weight. The term “crown” is sometimes used to describe the copper-nickel versions of the previously silver coins. Crowns are popular with collectors of “modern” world coins, generally defined as coins produced from A.D. 1500 to the present.

Crown-sized coins, issued by numerous countries, are available in numerous denominations – pesos, dinars, francs, shillings, reales, marks, dollars and, yes, even crowns.

The first modern European crown-sized silver coin, the taler, was issued in Austria in the mid-1480s. In a relatively short period, the silver crown gained wide popularity and was adopted nearly everywhere in Europe.