The central bank’s governor Gideon Gono chopped 10 zeros off the Zimbabwe dollar and reintroduded coins which have been obsolete for years.

The highest denomination of Zimbabwe currency is currently 100 billion.

After the currency announcement, President Robert Mugabe warned in a televised event Wednesday that he will declare a state of emergency if prices continue to rise.

Officially inflation is at 2.2 million percent, but private sector economists estimate it is at least five times higher. Prices double every few days.

The purchase of a small packet of cookies can easily cost 400 billion Zimbabwe dollars. Bread, when it is available, is about 200 billion dollars. A few every day items can cost trillions of dollars, and houses for sale are advertised in quadrillions.

Comparing costs with South African groceries, using a combination of official and black market rates, groceries in Zimbabwe are between three and four times the cost for the same goods in South Africa.

Mr. Mugabe’s warnings about price increases came as South African president Thabo Mbeki arrived in Harare to mediate talks between the Movement for Democratic Change and ZANU-PF.

Mr. Mbeki will meet Mr. Mugabe, whom the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, has accused of stealing the election earlier this year.

The MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai easily beat Mr. Mugabe in the first round of the presidential poll but withdrew from the second round because of violence against his supporters.

“We are still negotiating, we want to succeed,” Mr. Mugabe said in his televised address.”You find room for compromise but sometimes compromise is difficult.”

Central bank governor Gono said the new currency will be launched Friday.

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Adam Staples, Lisa Grace and her 14-year-old son, Tom Grace –- out with his metal detector for the first time – made the discovery on land near Stanton-by-Bridge.

The trio, from Derby, were scouring the soil when their equipment began to beep.

Mr Staples scooped up the earth and in his hands were the first of 62 ancient coins they would find over the next six days.

Yesterday, an inquest held at Derby Coroner’s Court decided they were treasure – which means they are more than 300 years old and contain less than 10% gold or silver.

The items must now be offered for sale to a museum at a price set by an independent board of antiquities experts. Only if a museum expresses no interest in the item, or is unable to purchase it, can the owner retain it.

The coins date back to the reign of four emperors, Diocletianus, Maximianus, Constantius and Galerius, who ruled Britain between 296AD and 305AD.

Ms Grace, 35, of Reeves Road, said: “We were so excited when we found the coins, absolutely ecstatic. We have found coins, ingots and other Roman pieces before but nothing as old as this.”

The haul was discovered between September 27 and October 3 last year.

The treasure hunters handed the coins to Derby Museum, which in turn sent them to the British Museum in London to be catalogued.

Mr Staples, 32, said he had been searching for treasure with a metal detector for more than 15 years.

He said: “The coins were found below the surface of the ground where the land had been ploughed quite deep.

“We were hovering the metal detectors above the soil when it started beeping really fast to indicate there is a real hoard of metal.

“We found 20 coins on the first day and a similar amount the following day. Then it was a case of a couple here and there after that.”

Mr Staples said they were the size of a £2 coin but were heavier because they were mainly made of lead.

He said he unearthed a gold ingot in a field in Leicestershire last year and a hearing is yet to take place to decide who owns it.

Once the independent valuation has taken place, the trio will be eligible for 50% of the value of the coins as the finders.

The other half will go to the landowner, David Grummett, 62.

He said: “I always give Lisa, Adam and Tom permission to go searching on my land because they are such nice people.

“When the money comes I’ll probably take my wife out for a meal, or maybe I should go out and buy a metal detector for myself.”

A spokesman for the British Museum said valuing them was a difficult job.

He said: “We never like to say how much things are worth until they have been independently valued.”

Ray Rippingale, assistant director of cultural services at Derby City Council said he hoped the city museum would buy the coins.

He said: “These coins would be a valuable addition to the extensive collection we already have at Derby Museum and we would be delighted to provide a home locally for this splendid find.”

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A rare $5 banknote from the long-defunct Bank of Vancouver has sold for a record $28,750.

Marc Verret of C&P Numismatics in Quebec City auctioned the note at the Canadian Numismatic Association convention in Ottawa on July 18. It had belonged to an Alberta collector, who purchased it in an auction in the United States about 15 years ago. Verret declined to give the buyer’s or seller’s names, citing client confidentiality.

The Bank of Vancouver was launched in the midst of a real estate and industrial boom in 1910 by some of B.C.’s most prominent capitalists, including the lieutenant-governor, James Paterson, and future Vancouver mayor William Malkin, of Malkin Bowl fame. But the boom went bust, and the bank went out of business on Dec. 14, 1914.

The bank’s headquarters was in the Flack Block, a beautiful heritage building at Cambie and Hastings that recently underwent a $20-million restoration.

It issued $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 banknotes, but only a handful remain, and they almost never come up for sale.

“I’ve only ever seen one Bank of Vancouver banknote in 25 years in the business,” said Brian Grant Duff of All Nations Coins and Stamps in Vancouver.

“In the past I’ve only ever been able to find [uncirculated] proof notes where archives had them, and they came to market. I’ve had good success with those, but I’ve never seen a real banknote [for sale].”

B.C.’s premier banknote collector, Ron Greene, said he knows of only nine Bank of Vancouver circulating banknotes: six fives, two tens and one twenty. No fifties or hundreds seem to have survived, aside from proofs.

The $5 note that was just sold looks like it’s been through the wringer: It’s wrinkled, has some small water stains and has been written on in pen. But it’s still quite striking. It’s green in colour, and features a Vancouver harbour scene on the front and the legislature buildings in Victoria on the back.

“There aren’t a lot of really great notes,” said Greene.

“[But] there is one that is a lot nicer, and with a better serial number: i.e., No. 1. I had heard rumours of it 25 years ago, and it turned up about 10 years ago. It would reasonably carry a premium on it [if it ever came up for sale].”

Banks issued their own money until 1935, and when the bank went under, there was reportedly $325,000 in Bank of Vancouver notes in circulation. Most were probably redeemed by other banks and then destroyed.

Greene said there is $3,200 in Bank of Vancouver money still outstanding, so it’s possible there may be other notes in collections no one knows about.

At its height, the Bank of Vancouver had a dozen branches scattered around the province with four in Vancouver, two in Victoria and one each in South Vancouver, Coquitlam, New Westminster, Chilliwack, Fort Fraser and Fort George (now Prince George), he said.

He said the bank’s collapse was linked to the financial woes of the time.

“British Columbia entered a depression at the end of 1912-1913,” said Greene.

“The money that was coming from England and from Germany, that was pouring into the province and created a boom, just got turned off. Both countries realized they were going to war.”

It wasn’t the only local financial institution that collapsed.

“The immediate cause [of the bank's failure] is probably that the Dominion Trust collapsed a couple of months before it,” said Greene.

“There was a run on the bank at one point and they managed to weather that, but they didn’t manage to weather the run on the Dominion Trust company when it failed.”

The Bank of Vancouver was one of three British Columbia banks that sprang up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The others were the Macdonald and Company Bank (1858-1864), which went out of business after a robbery, and the first Bank of British Columbia (1862-1901), which was taken over by the Bank of Commerce.

Read Full Article Here

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The Case of the Missing 300 Silver Dollars, or What In The World Is Something Like That Doing In A Place Like This, likely will never be solved. That they were actually uncovered is astonishing enough, but to find out why 300 Morgan silver dollars from 1887 in mint condition were under a foot of hardened soil on former Amarillo Mayor Jerry Hodge’s property, well, let your imagination be your guide.

Our story begins June 11. Plumbers were digging a trench to run utilities for a pool house and swimming pool on property Hodge had purchased adjacent to his home on Oldham Circle in Amarillo. Randy McMinn had a backhoe about a foot deep when on one particular scoop, mixed in with the dirt, was found a bunch of dingy little objects.

Whoa, time out. Work came to a halt, and closer inspection revealed them to be coins – old coins from 1887. Careful digging found a lot more in some kind of fine plastic, what Margaret, Hodge’s wife, described as sort of an old version of Saran Wrap. Lest anyone think plastic is a recent invention, plastic was used as early as World War I.

The coins had Lady Liberty on one side and the American eagle on the other. A little bit of homework found them to be Morgan silver dollars, which were minted from 1878 to 1904. A count of the coins totaled 100 … 150 … 200 … 250 … 300 of them.

Avast, matey, buried treasure!

Read Full Story Here

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THE crowd of medal collectors breathed a collective sigh and craned in their seats as Australia’s first piece of colonial art sold for $750,000 at auction to a beaming mystery buyer seated in the third row.

Minutes later, it was revealed that the National Maritime Museum had bought the Charlotte Medal — a silver disc engraved by the convict and expert forger Thomas Barrett when the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay. Even the most hardened medal collectors paused in their bidding to clap.

Very little material survives from the ships of the First Fleet, so the Sydney museum sent its assistant director of collection and exhibitions, Michael Crayford, to Melbourne to secure a seminal piece of Australian history.

“It is also one of the best artworks for that period (so) we’re absolutely thrilled to have it and it will be on display to the public within weeks,” Mr Crayford said.

The silver disc was sold by John Chapman, a retired dentist, who bought it at auction in 1981 for $15,000.

The rest of his extensive collection of Australian medals, coins and banknotes, valued at $1.6 million before auction, also went under the hammer at the Noble Numismatics auction yesterday.

“I’m very pleased because what I wanted was for the medal to be displayed to the public,” Dr Chapman said. “You realise that in the end you can’t own these things, you’re just the custodian.”

Thomas Barrett crafted the souvenir medal at the request of the ship’s doctor, John White, when the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay on January 20, 1788.

Cut from a surgeon’s kidney dish, on one side its engraving shows the Charlotte secured to a buoy at Botany Bay, with the sun, crescent moon and stars adorning the sky, and dark marks that may represent ocean fish.

On the other side is a description of her voyage from England to Australia, including latitude, longitude and the length of the arduous journey.

By the time Barrett arrived at Botany Bay, he had already twice avoided execution.

Ever the entrepreneur, Barrett and a group of other forgers made quarter-dollars from melted belt buckles and pewter spoons while on their voyage, and used them to buy goods from merchants in Rio de Janeiro through the Charlotte’s portholes — almost sparking an international incident.

Six weeks after the colony was established, however, Barrett was hung for stealing butter, “pease” and pork.

The National Maritime Museum only has one other First Fleet item in its collection — a wooden sea chest that is believed to have been the property of convict Henry Kable and brought to Australia.

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