Saor Alba

Saor Alba PCI2010 Group 6 - 1901-2000: Submissions - Italy 50th Anniversary of the Kingdom of Italy 50 Lire commemorative 1911:

Kingdom of Italy 50 Lire - 1911

This lovely coin was the largest denomination of several commemorative coins issued in 1911 that celebrated the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. Before the Kingdom of Italy was founded with the King of Sicily as it's ruler, Italy was a patchwork of small feudal states and small kingdoms. This coin commemorates the past, but also the future, with the ocean liner behind the two figures on the reverse of the piece.

Saor Alba - Scotland Queen Mary Half Lion or 22/- dated 1553:

Half Lion or 22/- 1553

This coin represented the second gold coinage from Queen Mary's reign, issued whilst she was in France for "safekeeping" from the English. During this period she was represented in Scotland by her regent, James, Earl of Arran and his initials IG are represented on the shield side of the coin.

Saor Alba Mary Queen of Scotland Penny ca. 1547:

Scotland, Mary, Penny struck ca. 1547

This diminutive piece is not pretty, but one of the best available examples of a coinage struck in 1547 when Queen Mary was six years old, and English forces were harrying the border during the period of the "Rough Wooing" when Henry VIII had his army harass the Scots in pursuit of having Queen Mary betrothed to his son who would later become Edward VI.

Portrait coins from Queen Mary's reign are very rare, most notably these early pennies because they were small enough that very few of them have been located. The portrait gold and silver coins issued briefly later in the reign were more often saved because of the value of them. These pennies were often heavily circulated and subsequently lost - resulting in their great rarity now.

Saor Alba Edward III Nobel ca. 1364-5:

Edward III Nobel ca 1364-5 S-1502

A bit of Anglish booty from south of Hadrian's wall, this Edward III nobel was minted ca. 1364-5 during the brief period of peace while a treaty betwixt the English and French were not slaughtering each other in France. This is reflected on this noble, as it bears Edward III's English and Irish titles, but not the French as were on the previous and subsequent coinages.

Whilst contemporary coinages of England and Europe were rather crude and unattractive, these nobles and their fractions were inspired by the gold coinages in Italy, notably Fiorenza(Florence) and England had to best them with this attractive and inspirational piece that would further inspire Scottish coinage during the time.

Gold medal struck by Moneda de Mexico, the Mexican mint in 1957 to commemorate the centennial of the constitution of 1857. This medal was struck on blanks made for the 50 peso coin:

Gold medal from Mexico - 1857 Constitution Commemorative

Here is a medal from the Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exposition in St Louis in 1904:

Louisiana Purchase Medal - 1904

This is the bronze medal from the expo and has the original box and paperwork. This medal was designed by Adolph Weinman who would go on to design the Walking Liberty Half Dollar. This medal was minted by the Philadelphia mint.

This is a handstruck silver medallion probably engraved by Joe Rust of Gallery Mint Museum:

Hand Struck Silver Medallion

Which would suggest something from Prague or Bohemia

Equatorial Guinea 250 Pesetas

Equatorial Guinea 250 Pesetas in gold with Maja Desnuda by Goya

There's a Coinpeople facebook? Wow! That i'd didn't know.

Yes, Ætheling and Sir Sisu, come on by and join up. Even some of the Ogres and Bunnies are known to be on there.

Which was why the USA instituted the National Bank programme in 1863, replacing state chartered banks with Nationally chartered banks. Of course we all know that even that drove good money completely away.

I'd be in if I had anything new since the last 2 or 3 PCIs. I am sure I will vote some, though.

I think the previous PCI's inspired me to buy better stuff

Yes, back then most banknotes were uniface.

A purchase awhile back, and one that took awhile to get because of being in UA.

Voted scrapped for no other reason than to be a stinker

A couple of years ago I passed over 5 of the Bison notes in favour of some unique Nationals and LT notes from 1862-3. I wished I had taken the best of them which was VF.

Super notes. How do you get the isolated images of some of the vignettes? I'd love to learn how to do that. I can cut & paste. But when I increase the size of the image it gets freaky looking.

Art, I scan them at a high resolution, usually 600dpi for banknotes which gives you a very large image with great detail. Then with the note images I just reduce the size of the images to approx. 800 pixels wide for easy viewing. The vignettes I cut out at the scanned image size and do no reductions on them.

You can reduce the image size with not much loss of detail, but the other way around only stretches the pixels and blurs the image.

Curiously I have found a few banknotes, notably early Dutch banknotes are scanner resistant - and can only be imaged at even higher resolutions because of the patterns in the design:

If you can this one at lower, ie the 150 or 300dpi, you will get a phenomenon called moiring , where you get moire patterns all over the note. Some bright Dutchmen in Joh Enschede en Zonen was way ahead of his time with these patterns on the note that made re-imaging so difficult - quite an accomplishment for a 1920's technology that was used up through the 1950's on Dutch notes.

Super notes. How do you get the isolated images of some of the vignettes? I'd love to learn how to do that. I can cut & paste. But when I increase the size of the image it gets freaky looking.

Art, I scan them at a high resolution, usually 600dpi for banknotes which gives you a very large image with great detail. Then with the note images I just reduce the size of the images to approx. 800 pixels wide for easy viewing. The vignettes I cut out at the scanned image size and do no reductions on them.

You can reduce the image size with not much loss of detail, but the other way around only stretches the pixels and blurs the image.

A very rare in the grade example of a Nicaraguan fractional currency note from 1938:

Notice the bank name is also in English! That went away with the new issues beginning in 1941.

Are those Mexican note regular circulation issues, or are they more of a NCLT type of thing (like how the 2000 yen notes and US $2 don't really circulate)?

They are circulating issues. That is the nice thing about Mexico, they issue worthwhile collectables, at face value in both coins and paper money and everything circulates - though the silver coins tend to get saved. They haven't done NCLT stuff in a long time, and actually those were medals in gold that were made up through the 1960s struck on the 50 Pesos blanks - and I collect them whenever I can find them.

Dave M, great Djibouti note, love the colour and wow, what an interesting scenario what with an Asian issued note being overprinted for use in the Horn of Africa in another of France's far flung possessions.

Indeed, those Mexican notes are awesome, kind of makes you wish we had that kind of creativity in the BEP doesn't it?

I haven't seen the Spanish note, can you tell me more?

They are in Madisons's post way up above, the 100 ptas and 1000 ptas notes.

BTW JT have you seen this new Mexican note also:

Curiously whilst BdM did the $100 in polymer, this one is in regular banknote paper.

Oh at least I have beatens the lots of you by getting the Spanish and Mexican notes before ya's

Both sets of them are ones that are out of the usual for my collection, other than with the Spanish notes they are very finely printed by BW&S and the Mexican $100 just has amazing colouring and a nice design coupled with being polymer. Kind of shames our boring currency doesn't it?

Somehow I managed to get a Russian 1 kopek dated 2006 in change somewhere in Ukraine. It was masquerading as a Ukrainian Kopek or rather as a coin that is worth nearly three times as much. I think recently the Russian kopeks became so worthless that the denomination was demonetized.

I usually do not save Euro coins unless they are from somewhere a bit unusual, I got a 1 euro coin from Cyprus in change the other day and found a 5 Euro note lying in the snow this morning.