The Pound coin

Quote:

Originally Posted by phild

I remember my brother used to clean all his old Victorian pennies with brown sauce, a tip he picked up from Blue Peter and they would come up like brand new. He found out later that cleaning them could make the coins worth less on the collectors market.

I remember nearly everyone in the early 70's checking their change to see if they could find an elusive, rare 1933 penny. This coin was highlighted by the fact that thieves had dug up the foundations of a church in 1970 where one of these rare coins had been buried. Only about a dozen were minted that year and 3 of them were buried beneath newly built buildings for that year. One had been unearthed and given to a museum and a third is still under a building of the London University.

I remember doing that very same thing with brown sauce having seen it on Blue Peter! Thankfully, I knew better by the time I'd inherited my grandad's coin collection. Nothing in it of great individual value but when I look at all those darkened Victorian or Edwardian pennies I can't help but think of all the hands they must have passed through and what they might have been used to pay for, whether bus or tram fares or foodstuffs. I've also got an old Victorian token that was probably used in the Black Country to "spend" in one of the Earl of Dudley's shops.