George IV Halfpenny Very Good

Most people associate 1912 with the sinking of the unsinkable ship The Titanic but, as numismatists, we think of it as the year the Royal Mint couldn’t produce all the Pennies they needed and had to get an outside firm to help them. That firm was the Heaton Mint Ltd. in Birmingham. So if you look at a 1912 Penny to the left of the date and slightly upward you may well see an ‘H’ mintmark. This was the mintmark for the Heaton Mint. We have made up this pair of 1912 and 1912 H Pennies in a plastic flip-type envelope, so you can see both pennies at the same time. The coins are in selected circulated condition which, considering that they are now 110 years old, is quite good condition. Show them to your friends and ask if they can spot the difference. If they can’t, then you can show them the ‘H’ and explain what else happened.

The autonomous region called the TransDniester Republic issued a most unusual set of coins in 2014. They are made of composite material, are semi-transparent, and have a textured surface. This territory was part of the Soviet Union, and later became an unrecognised Moldovan breakaway state, that is still recognised internationally as being part of Moldova. These coins are a plastic-type material but with a hardness that produces a stone-like sound when rubbed. They were issued by the 'TransDniester Republic Bank' and there are 4 denominations. 1 Rouble circular, 3 Roubles square with rounded corners, 5 Roubles pentagon-shaped with rounded corners, and 10 Roubles hexagonal with rounded corners. They have rounded corners for ease of use and for ease of machine readability at high speeds. These were an experiment and who knows if they will continue to issue them. But we thought that they were very interesting and rather well priced so we obtained 100 sets of them. Supplies are limited.

These Russia 50 kopecks were issued as a Treasury Small Change note in 1915 (P31) It’s fairly small. It’s a simple affair with a crowned double headed eagle as the main illustration. This motif was disbanded after the Russian Revolution which followed two years later in 1917. Available here in EF.