Saor Alba

323 - that is an amazing collection

I searched the $10 worth I bought for my slot machine yesterday and there were three in the early 40's, a couple of 1950's and three S mints from '68-70. The one 1942 is the non war nickel variety, but in really nice EF shape.

I've gotten plenty of 2009 and 2010 cents, but not a single 2011 yet. I have not seen quarters dated after 2009,

A bumper day for coinstar machine searches. Found 47 cents in one machine, all in cents - five of them were bronzers, then 87 cents in another one - two Canadian 25c coins, one US quarter, one US dime and two cents. A total of 53 coins in the machines. Then at the bank I managed to find five more Ikes for my Ike hoard.

Since last Thursday a Kuwait 50 Milliemes dated 2001, a Cayman Islands 25 cents dated 2002, a regular old Roosevelt dime, a crusty Zincoln and then one of the strangest finds in awhile.... A 1745 British shilling. My heart raced for a mere second as I chanced upon the "LIMA" under George II's bust. Unfortunately it looks like a well cast counterfeit and indeed there is a very tiny "COPY" under "Dei Gratia" in the legend. Curiously the Kuwaiti coins and the Cayman Islands coins seem to be fairly common in this machine, I have gotten several since December.

I was doing the ritualistic asking for Ikes, $2 bills and pre-1970 halves at the banko yesterday and the teller said she did have one pre-1970 half but that it was "dirty, and you probably won't want it" Oh not a problem, me thinks, I will just take it anytheways an do with it what I please, hmmn thinking along the lines of Pink Floyd's song "I need a dirty woman". Yep, narsty toned 1964 Kennedy - $12.76 worth of fine American silver, worth 24.50 times what I paid for it. God, I love America, and I love doity coins

I hope Smudge had her rabies shots in that case

I just hope she doesn't decide to stop destroying photographs and start going after Libby to teethe on But seriously a few teething marks might add some character, and a good thing if Smudge actually cuts a tooth on her.

Purchased sometime ago and let lay around un-imaged for awhile: 19th century Uruguayan banks liked colourful paper money - and well printed at that - there was a veritable competition betwixt BWC, ABNCo, G&D and BdF for printing contracts there. This note printed by ABNCo belies some of the printing techniques developed by the Homer Lee Banknote Co early in the 1880's when they were merged with ABNCo.

Here is the WaMu token in the flesh:

Oh great, Smudge will be teething on poor Libby.

I have wanted one of those Tibetan notes, they are so cool - printed on multiple layers of paper bonded together with woodblock style print - a local approach to a high tech solution to making the notes counterfeit proof. They were used into the mid 1950's for a time even after the Chinese came in and started colonising the place.

Took my rejected Zincolns back to the banky to turn in, looked in the reject tray and found a 3 cent piece Unfortunately it is some slightly larger than a quarter sized token for Washington Mutual Bank promoting some 3 cent debit rebate programme they had running in 2006. BTW this bank is one that was closed by the Feds in 2008 and sold off to JP Morgan Chase.

He used the same reverse die hub for the other dates, the 1939 etc. They are not as easy to find because of the mintmark thing, but on the reverse of the Henning nickel the R of the word PLURIBUS has a peculiar loop on the bottom of the left part of the letter.

The ultimate find for me would be one of the counterfeit Henning Nickels from 1944, they were circulated in the 1950's and I have heard of people finding them in circulation.

What really throws me off on those Algerians, they totally eliminated all Western text, ie the French they used to have on the notes. But then they used the westernized "Arabic" numerals. But I like the ancient motifs in the designs though.

I am guessing Tunisia? I would like to see larger images of the notes - lots to see that is not apparent in the mini images.

CCG, since you mentioned it - they went from intaglio printing on the earlier notes to photogravure printed notes which accounts for the difference in printing techniques - I own sets of both the 1980 and then the 1996 era notes and noticed the difference on the lower than 5 Yuan notes.

The Chinese notes are from what is by far one of my favourite national series of banknotes from China. Now all those ethnic minorities have been replaced by Chairman Mao

I have noticed when I am in the stores a lot more people checking them, and I haven't made a decent find in quite awhile.

I remember back in '09 how hard it was to find the new cents. Now they are all over the place. Seems to me like the '10s came out in abundance from the start. I think I did get a DC quarter and maybe a PR back in '09 but I haven't seen anything since then. But then I live in a sucky part of the country where more people are leaving than moving in, and the money leaves too.

Or they could be parked in a distribution centre somewhere and might not be discovered and released into the wild for a couple of years. I have gotten 2010 dated nickels, several of them. Aside from cents and nickels I haven't seen much if anything dated after 2009 - quarters all seem to be 2008 or before.

Think the key dates have to be those last couple of mintages, less than 50M each.

Last time I did a box I was disappointed, only about 4-5 coins from the '40s and '50s.

Got the rejects at the bank where I buy the $50 bags of pennies today: Austria 2 Euro Cent 2006 Japan 1 Yen, year 2(1991) Kuwait 100 fils 2007 Nicaragua 1 Cordoba 2000 Sweden 1 Krone 2002 Venezuela 1 Bolivar 1989 Venezuela 1 Bolivar 1989 Venezuela 1 Bolivar 1990 Venezuela 50 Bolivares 1998 - curiously the same diametre as the 1 Bolivar - inflation must have taken over. In the cents I found: 13 San Francisco minted coins 14 Wheats, dating back to 1941 and three S minted coins 1 GVI Canada cent 1 Rand from South Africa dated 1994, a nickel sized coin and nickel coloured also! 2 Roosevelt dimes.