New Zealand, George VI Type Set

These Billon Silver coins were minted between A.D.1022 and A.D.1135, making them between 900 and1000 years old! They were created in India by those who fled the Islamic expansion and were based on Sassanian coins showing the side facing bust of the monarch on the obverse and a fire altar on the reverse. As time went by, they started to get less and less realistic as the reason for the designs were lost. This means that the coins we have from around 300 years later are very abstract! The stories of Sinbad the Sailor are based on the sea voyages that Arabic peoples made down across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon and these are the coins that the sailors would have found on their journeys. We offer you these Silver Billon coins called Gadhaiya Paisa that were the major trade coins of medieval India. The obverse shows a stylised head facing to the right with the reverse showing a fire altar made from abstract dots and lines.

This halfcrown sized coin was issued by the South American country of Peru in 1969. It has a modern representation of two fish on the reverse and the Peruvian coat of arms on the obverse. You don’t see all that many modern coins from Peru and this one has quite an attractive design on it and is in uncirculated condition. Supplies are very limited.

Our friends at Lighthouse have designed a glove especially for handling coins. In between the ridges and valleys of your fingerprints there are acids. If these come into contact with the surface of the coins, this can leave your fingerprint indelibly etched into the surface of the coin. The real problem is that it can take years for this ‘fingerprint’ to appear. They have designed lightweight cotton gloves that are easy to wear and still protect your coins from damage due to handling.