History of Monetary Imperialism
By Henry C K Liu - Asia Times
Over the course of the 19th century, enough gold was known to have been accumulated by Britain to make it credible for the British Treasury to introduce paper currency backed by its gold to force the demonetization of silver in Europe to advance British monetary imperialism.
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It’s the End Of the World As We Know It and I Own Gold
Seeking Alpha
There seems to be a good deal of confusion these days about the reasons why individuals should own gold. Who owns gold? While there’s the “momentum crowd” - those who will buy anything that is going up or sell short anything that is going down - these folks are more traders than owners and don’t really factor into the “ownership” discussion.
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Reserve Bank Building Stoned
By RadioVop
The Reserve Bank (RBZ) Building in Bulawayo was on Wednesday stoned and damaged by some residents who were angered by their failure to access cash from banks.
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Seven Coins with Potential
By Mark Benvenuto, Coins Magazine
Gamblers always want to find that safe bet - a sure way to make some money. Some of them convince themselves a particular bet is a good one, even when a bit of reasoned logic would tell them they are throwing money down a toilet. But whatever they consider lucky - including that “lucky 7″ in card and dice games - usually overrides any calm, reasonable judgment.
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U.S. firm rebuts Spanish charges over $500 mn treasure haul
By Emilio J. Lopez - Trading Markets
U.S. treasure-hunting firm Odyssey Marine Exploration denied Spanish government claims that it “secretly” scoured the ocean floor to find a wreck containing a $500 million haul of colonial-era coins. “Odyssey in this case followed all the appropriate archaeological and legal protocols,” Odyssey CEO Greg Stemm told Efe, calling allegations to the contrary false and “inflammatory.”
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Birmingham firm strikes Barack Obama presidential coin
By Tom Scotney,
A company in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter is making commemorative coins for American presidential hopeful Barack Obama. And if the Democratic candidate is elected to become the most powerful man in the world on November 4, it could open the floodgates for millions of pounds worth of business for the firm.
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Austria Honors Empress Line
By World Coin News
The Empress Elisabeth West Railway from Vienna to Salzburg is the fourth railway to be commemorated on a silver coin from the Austrian Mint. Its availability was announced Sept. 10. The obverse of the new silver 20 euro coin shows the locomotive 306 steaming across an iron railway bridge.
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Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee Meets Today
US Mint
The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) will hold a public meeting at 9 a.m. (ET) on Wednesday, September 24, 2008, at United States Mint headquarters at 801 9th Street NW, Washington D.C. 20220. The purpose of the meeting is to conduct business related to the CCAC’s responsibility to advise the Secretary of the Treasury on themes and designs pertaining to United States coinage.
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Namibia: Shipwreck Explorers in Race Against Time
By Werner Menges - All Africa
Two and a half weeks more - this is the only time a multinational team of archaeologists have left to salvage what they can from the site where the remains of a centuries-old shipwreck emerged from the ocean floor near Oranjemund on April 1.
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Dollars Aren’t Only Coins Not Circulating
By Dan Knauth, Numismatic News
It’s been reported that the Mint is going to be encourage people to use the dollar coin in targeted cities. They’re probably paying a marketing company hundreds of thousands instead of facing facts. Other than a few coin collectors, people do not like the dollar coin. They should change the dollar coin, or just give up on it.
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How to spot a counterfeit pound coin
Mirror.UK
We might have no trouble spotting a phoney fiver or a bent tenner. But how easy is it to tell whether the pound coins in your pocket are, er, the full shilling? Not very, according to this week’s news from the Royal Mint, which revealed that as many as one in every 50 pound coins is counterfeit.
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The new Lincoln pennies are dishonest about Honest Abe
By Jason Cochran, Wallet Pop
The U.S. Mint is officially the P.T. Barnum of currency. It’s addicted to showmanship. Yesterday, in a heartwarmingly goofy ceremony at Washington DC’s Lincoln Memorial, an actor dressed as Abe unveiled its four new designs for the penny, all of which will be released in 2009 to commemorate the 200th birthday of the put-upon Civil War president. They’re just the latest pocket party favors for our ongoing patriotic fervor.
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Spain claims ‘proof’ of Spanish origin of Odyssey treasure
Canada.com
Spain’s government said Tuesday it has proof of the Spanish origin of treasure recovered from a wreck in the Atlantic by deep-sea explorer firm Odyssey, and demanded the U.S. company hand it back.”Spain yesterday (Monday) presented to the court in Tampa (Florida) the proof” that the treasure came from the wreck of the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, the culture ministry said in a statement.
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Experts Predict News Record Highs for Gold
By Pat Heller, Market Update
In the past week or so, the spot prices of gold and silver have risen more than 20 percent and 25 percent, respectively, from their recent lows. The prices of gold and silver bullion-priced products have gone up by even higher percentages as buyers scrambled to purchase any coins or ingots they could find.
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A new penny, but why?
LA Times - Editorial
In honor of the upcoming bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, the U.S. Mint is giving the 100-year-old Lincoln penny a new look. The front will continue to show his profile, but the Lincoln Memorial on the back will be replaced by images that are intended to evoke different aspects of his life, such as a log cabin and young Abe sitting on a log, reading. This is expected to create a big buzz in the coin-collecting world, but in truth, the only makeover the penny needs is a disappearing act.
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New penny designed partly in Philadelphia
By Peter Mucha - Inquirer
As a teen, Charles Vickers, a sculpture/engraver for the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, had to split firewood using a wedge and a wood-headed hammer called a maul. So, a few years ago, when the mint assigned him to submit one of four new designs for the penny, an image immediately came to the Jenkintown gentleman’s mind: Lincoln’s reading a book while taking a break from splitting logs with a double-banded maul.
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The Central Bank of Bahrain issues new notes
Bahrain Tribune
The Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB)Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) issued new currency notes and coins worth BD11.9 million, in the run-up to Eid Al Fitr; which have been delivered to commercial banks in the Kingdom. The new notes and coins are being issued to meet the increased demand for new currency.
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Collecting South Carolina Colonial Notes
By William Brandimore, Market Update
South Carolina notes are as varied as those from North Carolina. They feature lots of Latin mottos and my particular favorites carry vignettes of Hercules slaying the Nubian Lion; Prometheus having his liver devoured by a vulture and a figure who may or may not be Atlas, carrying a huge boulder.
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Design Changes in Store for Dollars and Cents
By Maggie Pahl, Market Update
After much attention and debate, the “In God We Trust” motto is making its home on the obverse of Presidential dollars in 2009.
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Half Dimes 70-Percent Off
Coin Collector’s Blog
Representative Frank Lucas, a Republican who represents Oklahoma’s 3rd District and a coin collector, introduced H.R.?6942 “to provide for the return of the half-dime as the new 5-cent circulating coin.” The text of the bill is very simple, it calls for the removal of “Paragraph (5) of section 5112(a) of title 31, United States Code” (31?U.S.C.?§5112(a)) that describes the current nickel as “a 5-cent coin that is 0.835 inch in diameter and weighs 5 grams.” In its place, the bill calls for “a clad half-dime that is based on the size and shape of the half-dime or 5-cent coin produced in the 1870s.”
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Re-engraving a mystery
By Tom DeLorey
The unexplained re-engraving at the Philadelphia Mint of an obverse and reverse pair of 1938 proof Jefferson nickel dies, as previously revealed by Michael Fey in a press release sent to the numismatic press in June of this year, is not unique after all. At least five different 1938 proof nickel obverse dies were enhanced by an engraver who hand carved details directly into working proof dies, and it remains to be seen if ANY 1938 proof nickel dies have the elusive “normal” design.
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1915 50C Panama-Pacific Half Dollar, Judd-1960 (previously Judd-1793), Pollock-2031, R.8, PR64 NGC. Die trial issue of the 1915 Panama-Pacific half before the S mintmark was added. Struck in gold with a reeded edge. This remarkable coin is one of only two pieces known and its illustrious pedigree goes back as far as Virgil Brand.

The story of this coin is best related in the Pollock reference. Pollock had carefully examined the #1 specimen, the Farouk-Norweb coin, but the same history and mysterious circumstances apply to this piece: “…planchet file marks and traces of an undertype, indicating that the half dollar dies were impressed on a cut-down $20 gold coin, which had been filed to remove high-relief details.

This piece is remarkably thick: 2.4 mm at the edge versus 2.1 mm for a regular-issue Panama-Pacific half dollar.

“The characteristics of the coin suggest that it was made clandestinely. Since the piece is overstruck instead of being made using a new planchet of normal thickness, it can be inferred that there was a desire on the part of the manufacturer that no mention of the piece be made in the bullion account books, and thus if may have been produced secretly at the Mint in the same manner as the 1913 Liberty nickel or the Class III 1804 dollar. The only other known example of the variety, listed as No. 2 in our census (this piece), is reportedly also struck over a cut down $20 gold piece.”

Close examination shows fine file marks that presumably would have effaced the design of the double eagle. However, a small remnant of the undertype survives on the reverse with a faint trace of what appears to be an O and a period to its left, located between the H in HALF and U of UNITED.

Ex: Virgil Brand; B.G. Johnson; Celina Coin Co.; A. Friedman; 1979 ANA Sale (New England, 7/79), lot 1365, where it realized an amazing $27,000.
From The Sound Beach Collection. (#62267)

Sold in the Heritage 2003 November Signature Sale #334 Lot 11252 for $165,000