There are many ways to look at this writing thing and this is the most basic.

(And so far 100% of the participants are Editors!)

Well i'm not quite sure how to respond to that one.

I researched the whole of the sixpence prices in the "Collector's Coins Great Britain 2005" (or maybe that should be 'Great Brittain' how that error got past us well never know...)

But for the 2006 edition i was drafted in to write an update on some aspects of the decimal coinage, namely the little known about die varieties. Much of the work is the general editor's and not mine but i have added a paragraph or two in there.

There is also another book on European medieval coinage pending publication that i proof read (not for spelling mistakes you'll be glad to hear, but i proof read on content accuracy) i amended a few things and added suggestions here and there.


So although i've never published anything of my own yet i've dabbled and meddled in other people's books!

Letter to the Editor about covers it for me.

I have never had anything printed. Not real surprising since I have never submitted anything.

I have been interviewed once or twice and quoted once or twice but not for anything earth shattering. Just about the website and once for an article about Pocket Pieces.

The closest I have ever come to being 'published' was with a couple of articles on this website and, at the time, I was writer, editor, publisher, and final approval authority, so that kind of made it easy.

Well I had my comments put into ESPN the magazine once and I have had 2 poems published in a book, that's about the extent of my experiences. Nothing numismatic related.

Pardom me for not thinking of that. Many numismatists participate in publishing via that route. Look in the front of the Standard Catalog, Coincraft, the Red Book, etc. If you go to www.coinfacts.com, you will find a long list of contributors.

I'm trying to write a screenplay. Does that count

Never had anything published. My name has appeared in some publications before.

None of the above. A write up in the Glasgow Herald, a Scottish newspaper, and then an interview on Radio Scotland division of the BBC.

I have wrote letters to the editorial pages of my local news paper on various subjects. But not of Numismatic relations.

I've had the one article in the Celator and one smaller one in NN.
I have one more in the works right now.

Quite a few letters to the editor. Those are easy :-)

Everyone on this board should at least send one annually. When you read an atricle you like let the editor and the author know

If it's an online article then i might, but i don't get any coin magazines. I've bought some in the past but they just don't cater for me needs, namely 10th century Anglo-Saxon coinage. Pity they don't have a medieval coin magazine over here that would be good, i'd buy that.

The celator http://www.celator.com officially caters to the ancient coin world through to the middle ages. The editor just recently talked about balance in the magazine. Of course he can only print what is submitted.

I think if you wrote an article on 10th century Anglo-Saxon coinage it would be published. I'd certainly read it. Plus, since the payment is a year's worth of issues you could sample the contents over twelve months time.

Having just found a few really in depth articles on Æthelred II coinage from 1978, i suppose once i've read them i might have something to say.

These articles are not very easy going though, they are academic but are a very dry academic style, focusing upon the coinage in minute detail, Assessment of moneyers, silver purity ratios for all classes. Quality standards per class, and weight averages, one article is all about using numismatic evidence to rank the boroughs in which they were produced. In the hammered world it's probably as in depth as say VAMS are on Morgan dollars.


I read part of the first one and it was talking about the proliferation of Æthelred II coins in Danish hoards, probably from the Danegeld. And the figures of coins represented are exact, basically how many coins were included, how many of which class and the ratio of the classes to one another to aid in acquiring a terminus post quem for the archaeological find. Also it includes the other non coin related items in the hoard such as bullion bars which were favoured by the Vikings for trade transactions. The presence of coins from Byzantium also allows historians to map the extent of the Viking incursions and trade routes, giving a demographic overview of the Scandinavian society of the day. All totally absorbing, except the author wasn't as lucid as he could have been, even i was finding it hard to concentrate.

Based on the entire post above, I would say that you will have a lot to say. Off hand, my suggestion is write about the coins from your own point of view. The academic stuff just supports your interest, etc., but as dry as you find it, it will murder anyone else. Talk about the man and his times. When you get to the Danegeld, you can distill the fact. At least, that is how I would do it.

I agree with Jorg that The Celator is a perfect publication for this. You can post parts to the World Forum here as you write them.

You are too modest!

Yes, editors will print almost any letter, especially in a narrow field like coins (or aviation or Pencil Sharpener Monthly or whatever). But there is a limit tp what an editor will put up with and to do this often, you have to have a flair for it. So, pat yourself on the back.

See you are the perfect person to distill the academic into something the rest of us can understand and enjoy


Why did the Saxons pay the Danegeld?
When did it stop?
Why are they called pennies?
Who made pennies first the English or the French?

The French, this is why the old English shorthand for penny was 'd' (as in £sd), d came from denier, a French denomination much like the penny, (a broad and thin silver coin) rather than the smaller and thicker sceats that circulated in England in the 8th and 9th centuries. Denier was from the Roman denarius.

The denier was introduced by Pepin the Short in France around 755 and within a decade or so Offa of Mercia introduced the penny. Mercia being the dominant Engligh kingdom at that time (before the kingdom of Wessex tipped the balance in their favour in the first half of the 9th century) meant that the lands they controlled and the other kingdoms that were their puppets like Wessex were converted to the new system. East Anglia was converted not long after.

The Kingdom of Northumbria kept the old sceats for some time (even upto 900). Until the Vikings gained control of York and their preference for silver meant that the pennies swiftly took over the North too.

Ha the Danegeld a most interesting form of external taxation. The king's of Denmark charged England a tax. If the English coughed up the Danes promised not to invade, loot, rape and pillage. If the English refused to pay they'd do some raids and lay coastal villages to wasted. So the English after having experience at first hand that the Vikings were very capable of this (especially when they ransacked Lindisfarne Abbey in 793 and stripped it).

So the English coughed up the money, the sums were quite extortionate, upto 36,000 pounds of silver (both pounds in weight and pounds in sterling as they were the same during this period). That'd be a few billion pounds now. This bought a two year raid free period from 1007-09.

In 1012 the Danes were bought off one again for 48,000 pounds of silver, they had sacked Canterbury and murdered the Archbishop.

To work out the number of pennies involved in those two payments alone (ignoring the 72,000 pounds one paid by Canute), it'd be 36,000 + 48,000 = 84,000 x 240 = 20,160,000 coins that went from England to Demark in 1007 and 1012 alone.

It's not surprising more Æthelred II coins are found in Denmark than in England. This is not counting the other Danegeld payments or the coins still circulating in England. In the late 10th and early 11th century England was a very wealthy country and the Vikings knew thins, originally they were happy to just do raids and pinch whatever they could. Then as the 10th century went on they demanded the English pay them off, then in the early 11th century the Danes figured rather than just taking payments every few years they might as well invade, overthrow the monarchy and take over. So that's what they did. In 1016 Canute became king of England and Denmark and her is where the Danegeld finally ceased to be paid.

Although the Danegeld lived on in another form of taxation known as talliage. So it didn't go away completely.

Of course the amusing bit about the Danegeld is the English used to pay the Danes off and as soon as the Danes had got the last installment, they'd then go and raid England anyway...

So where the sceats not silver then, and how did they begin?
Have you ever read The Pound by David Sinclair? It's a really basic overview of English coinage history. It read well, I'm just wondering if it's decent for an overview.

Naturally, from schoolyard bullies to local gangsters, all the way to nation states. Human behavior is fairly predictable in most circumstances.

BTW I have it on excellent authority that, "tenth century English pennies would be a refreshing subject" for publication in a certain magazine. I'm sure 9th and 11th would be fine as well

Sceats were silver... to begin with. By the end though they were so debased that some of them probably never saw more than a few atoms of silver.

I haven't heard of that book but i'll keep an eye out for it now. I do have the book by Mayhew "Sterling, the history of England's currency" but this like so many history books has a thing about starting at 1066. It's as if the the end of the Roman period to the year 1000 isn't worth knowing about. When in actual fact that period is probably more important than the rest put together, centuries 8-10 were the birth of 'England' as a nation. Consider this with say Germany of Italy which only managed unification in the 19th century and the achievements of the Anglo-Saxon kings becomes remarkably clear.

That is a cop-out, Ethel. I think there is an Aesop's fable to go along with that, the fox and the grapes, perhaps? Here is how things run with the MSNS MichMatist. I have solicited authors, paid them $50 or $100 and had their dues deducted from their payment. (You have to be an MSNS member to contribute. We just handle that retroactively.) If the MichMatist were only about Michigan numismatics, we could publish once a decade. It is also for Michigan numismatists. We run all kinds of subjects. I just paid for one about 7-11 sports medallions. Do not tell us that you "would but" because that just makes you a "wood butt." If you have 1000 words about 10th century Anglo-Saxon coinage, you can get paid for it. That goes for almost anything else from almost anybody else.

I edited the Diablo Die-Break, a newsletter from the Diablo Numismatic Society in Walnut Creek Calif when I was just out of High School. I gave up after soliciting articles for a long time, and feeling like I was the only one that contributed articles.

Yeah, but when you can pyay yourself a hundred bucks, it all sort of works out, doesn't it?

See the www.michigancoinclub.org for the range of articles we publish and pay for.

I will re-image all of my Siberia coins, and consider writing an article about my favourite land.

I needed to be able to click more than 1

Was the editor for the World Internet Numismatic Society newsletter, have written several articles and several letters to the editor of various magazines. I was also Project Coordinator for the Time for a Change in Our Change campaign and wrote all pages found on that site. Also did interviews for most of the numismatic press for the same. That's about it on the subject of numismatics.