Blown Away By Royal Mail International Delivery

You may be aware of this already if you follow me on Instagram but I was just blown away by this that I had to make a blog post about it. I posted the below coins to Spain (I'm in the United Kingdom) on the 25th April... and they arrived IN SPAIN exactly 3 days later!

Am I going mad? Are Royal Mail not busy? How did they get the envelope there that fast? I'm so impressed.

I must say thanks very much to Pablo for his order. Hope to deal with you again in the future! Left me a really nice review below that I have also listed on the 'Review' page on this blog.

Really excited to just engage with and help out fellow coin collectors!

Belgium Coin from WWII - I Can't Help Myself

I've landed on another WWII coin. This is a Belgium 5 Francs coin from 1941. Belgium was invaded by German forces on 10th May 1940. After 18 days Belgium surrendered beginning a German occupation that lasted until 1944.

As I mentioned in my before post; zinc and aluminium coins are normally issued in a time of crisis. In this instance copper and other metals used for coins during the time were needed for weaponry.

My WWII memorabilia is slowly building...

1862 Indian Commonwealth Coin

I haven't yet sorted through the latest batch of Indian coins to add any spares to the blog. HOWEVER, this one coin did catch my eye and I had to give it a look.

It's a 1/4 Anna 1862 Copper Coin. What a beautiful coin! I particularly like the old coins with the British Monarchs on it makes me feel like I'm closer to India, Australia, the general commonwealth! Unfortunately as you know the European Union has pulled us sharply away from the commonwealth. We are unable to make free trade deals with the likes of these countries because of the EUROPEAN UNION.

It winds me up when these career europhile politicians claim that being part of the European Union gives us more CLOUT on the world stage. Rubbish. Iceland with a population of just over 300,000 has signed a free trade deal with China and you guessed it, the European Union hasn't! Leaving the EU would allows us to engage with the Commonwealth countries which we've so shamefully abandoned.

Wow that's my rant for the day!

Let's Go Back to WWII - In The Netherlands

My favourite period by far for coins is WWII. The period is littered with zinc and aluminium coins. The reason so many WWII coins are zinc or aluminium is because many base metals such as copper and nickel had to be used elsewhere for the production of war materials.

This is a 1942 Netherlands 10 Cent. Germany invaded The Netherlands on 10th May 1940. These coins were produced from 1941-1943!

3 Worldwide Delivery's in 3 days!

Reporting to base! Very excited as during the weekend I had 3 customers, 2 of which were new, one returning! I find that the people that buy my spare coins have fantastic taste. As soon as I send them photos for them to check that they are to their standard I look at the photos and think 'Wow, these actually look really good' haha! 'I'd buy these coins myself!'

The countries that the orders went to are Romania, USA and Spain.

I'm also in talks with an Australian! HOW EXCITING!

Cleaning Zinc NAZI Coins - FEEL LIKE I'VE DISCOVERED FIRE

Ok I haven't discovered fire. However I may have stumbled across a way to clean ZINC coins.

Basically I found a Nazi coin with the swastika and the date covered up, which is no good to me! I need to see a date! So I took to the internet as I always do and typed in how to clean zinc.

How I cleaned the coin:
1. Squeeze lemon juice into a little tub
2. Put the coin in
3. Wait 6-12 hours (6 hours should be enough but I took it to 12!)
4. Brush off the juice with a tissue

DONE

I did the one coin then I ended up soaking all my Nazi coins! Worth a try if they're in really bad condition! I never clean coins because I know it ruins them most of the time, but if they're in awful condition what have you got to lose?

Before and after, and my little lemon juice tub

You can see the dirt rise to the surface 

The finished products

A Coin 296 Years Old, In My Hands

Yesterday a gigantic load of coins arrived! 12 kilograms! I'll go into more detail in terms of what I received in due course but first let's talk about the oldest (recognisable) coin in the load.

1720 Half Penny. A coin 296 years old. I've researched on an auction site that one of these in good condition costs £420! WHAT! Obviously this one below isn't worth that, it's probably worth half a penny still... but it's still cool to have a 'new old' coin to add to my collection!

Front

Back 

What it should look like! 

Building A 2014 Coin Into A Church Wall

I mentioned in my blog post yesterday that I replaced the coin I found in the church yard with another coin! Well here it is, with the photo!

I remember repointing the flint work and it got down to this last void that I had to fill. I remembered in my pocket I had some change! Would you believe it, it was a virtually uncirculated 5 pence coin from 2014. Perfect!

My hope is that in maybe 1000 years time when this area is rebuilt again somebody may find my note and my coin and get rich. Although I'm slightly worried the coin will deteriorate somehow because I literally wrapped it in the note, no plastic! So it's a long shot!

How cool would it be if when rebuilding the church wall I found a note and a coin? Imagine that!

I Found My Oldest Coin Digging Up A Graveyard

WOOOOAH! Don't take the title of this blog post as criminal activity! My previous job was a labourer working for 2 builders who specialised in Church restoration. A whole new drainage system had to be put in and you know what that means... Trenches... at least 3 foot deep... around the whole Church. This meant we'd be digging up history! We'd be digging through unmarked graves from hundreds of years ago. This coin didn't come from a grave though.

We were digging the trench for the pipe on the North side of the Church. Lee, my boss, was on the digger and I was with the shovel, down and dirty in the trenches making sure the trench had a nice 'fall' so the water in the pipe would actually run down it! Half way along the North side I remember Lee dropping a pile of soil from his digger onto the side and this circular piece of metal catching my eye.

I knew what it was straight away. I was worried that we'd have to 'hand it in' to a museum or something and they wouldn't have appreciated it as much as I would have! I got it into my pocket and I didn't even know what coin it was! It could have been a coin from 1500, 1300, a gold coin, or just a rotten 50 pence.

At dinner time I took it to my bag and put my phone light on it around the date. 1797! Bingo! I say bingo... It's virtually worthless. I would say it's worth face value. Yep 1 pence. It's a One Penny coin from 1797. Look at the condition! Horrendous! For any of you new policemen scouring the web for criminal activity please don't waste your time chasing me down for this old thing! To me it's part of history. It's the stories like these that make me want to collect and discover coins.

I actually did 'replace' the coin, planting my own coin built into the same church. I will do a blog post on this tomorrow! I've even got a photo of me building it in, and a photo of the note I left. Stay tuned!

Starting My Present Day Penny Collection

I'm not sure how common it is to collect circulated coins but I don't see why not? If I could go back in time to the year 1900 and collect up the best conditioned coins out of my back pocket then stick them in a folder, they'd be worth a lot more now! Obviously I wouldn't be alive to see them but it's about passing them on. Imagine if I had a family member who back in 1900 had this idea. To collect up the coins of their time for future generations.

Anyway the photo is my current circulated penny collection. The page starts at 1971 because the previous page is the old style large penny which finishes at 1967. So once you finish looking at the old pennies, flip over and you've got the newer version, in date order! I feel so efficient right now.

I know, there isn't many is there! But the beauty of doing this is my family and myself get a new load of pennies in their back pocket just from daily transactions! So I can sift through them and exchange them for worse condition coins in my collection. This is nearly as exciting as collecting old coins.

A 161 Year Old Coin I Didn't Even Realise I Had

This afternoon I searched my mini folder to see if I could find any hidden gems. You know when you learn things about coins over time such as words that link to the country of origin, or a certain monarch on the front... then you take a look at your collection and think wow! I didn't even realise I had this coin!

That's what I did this afternoon. I opened my folder to see this one particular coin. I turned my lamp on and found the date and some recognisable words on it that I could pump into google. Why didn't I do this before?

I found it was a French 10 Centimes from 1855. A coin 161 years old! Very bad condition but still, how cool! I can't even remember where I bought it from. I think it was in a pile!

As you can see below my coin is bottom left and bottom right. The photo on the right shows a different light because I literally had to hold it right up the lamp to even get the detail to show up on camera! The top photograph is a photo retrieved from google, just so you can see what it should look like! The google example is 1953 whereas mine is 1955!

The Story Behind How I Obtained One Of My Oldest Coins

Today I thought I'd take a look through my first ever coin collecting folder filled with random world coins in absolutely no date order! I think it was around 2 years ago I set up my small mini folder and at the time I was just getting into coin collecting.

This coin has a little bit of a story. When Mum sold me her full sovereign I took to the internet looking for old coins in the local area. I typed 'old coins' into Gumtree (second hand site) and this coin came up. It was in my city and not too far away from me. The owner was selling it for £5! At the time I had no idea what value it really was, and still don't today! The fact that it was so old had me hooked! When I pulled up at his house I knocked on his door I was pretty skeptical at first. He was a young guy who didn't even collect coins, I asked him! He just said it was left by the previous person who lived in the flat. I handed him the £5 note and off I went, feeling like I'd found an amazing little piece of history! Simple as that!

Even today I'm looking at it and thinking wow, this coin is 199 years old and it's in my hand. Unbelievable.

George III 6 Pence Dated 1817

On The Brink Of Modernity, In Belgium

What a smashing little coin this is. I know what you're thinking, it's not that old... I know! But that doesn't stop me appreciating its beauty! The 25 Centimes - Baudouin was minted between 1964-1975 so there's only a handful of coins looking like this! That's not to say it's rare because 20 Million of this particular coin was produced. I reckon if I lived until 300 years old this might be rare?

It is 2 grams of copper-nickel, but what a shame it isn't silver. A coin this beautiful SHOULD BE SILVER.

My Homeland Calls!

This morning I finalised a smashing order of coins with Marc Henry from Instagram. Two Shillings, One Shillings, Three Pence coins and Commemorative's! Hopefully this has helped him fill the gaps in his collection. Overall he bought 37 standard coins for £3.70 and 5 Commemorative coins for £5, then the postage! A lot of silvery coins! His collection must be top notch!

I'm really pleased because this is my first ever order going to the United Kingdom! This is my fourth order so far and all the others have gone abroad (which is so cool!)

An Order To USA!

Yesterday the famous @coin_collecting_fun messaged me on Instagram asking to send him my 10 oldest British One Pennies. You can see the coins below! 10 coins at £0.10 each and £2.00 economy delivery to the United States of America! The thing about economy delivery is it's over a 40 day delivery aim however I did offer standard delivery which would've been £3.00, and that would mean the envelope of coins would be there in 6-8 days! He must be a very patient man haha! When I get any coins delivered to me I'm like come on come on come on come on deliver now now now!

Thanks again Jeremy, hope you enjoy the coins!

A Possible Order To India!

I haven't posted on here in a couple of days which gets to me! I want to do a blog post per day, that's my aim!

Yesterday I arranged an order for a person called Karan in India! I'm just waiting on the payment. They wanted 5 One Penny coins (the old style!). What I found interesting was that they wanted one penny from each Monarch from the date 1898! A fantastic idea! If you look at the photograph below you will see what I mean. I personally collect all the dates and that's the only thing I look for, but this is a great idea!

The cost of these 5 coins was £0.50 total, and delivery to India is £3.00 for a 100 gram envelope. I don't think delivery to India for £3.00 is much at all! A letter that travels round the world for that price! Wow. When I first started doing this I was getting orders from all over the world and I'm really still mind blown by it all!

I'm still young at 21 years old and I find that travelling the world isn't something I should do now (if that's even something I did want to do in the future!). I'm at the 'working and saving up' stage of my life, not the spending part! However my coins are doing the travelling for me!

Euro Coins Exchange Update w/ LeftoverCurrency.com

Not really been able to get round to posting my updated folders on here today so that will have to be another time! Something exciting did happen today though! I mentioned in one of my earlier blog posts titled 'I Hate The Euro' that I was exchanging all of my Euro coins in.

I sent off the coins to a company called leftover currency, as I found out you can't exchange coins at the post office or the bank! You need to send them off! So I searched the web and found these guys. I'm actually really impressed with the service. You send them your coins, they send you the payment to either your bank or your Paypal! Below is the confirmation I received from them this afternoon! How exciting! 

I highly recommend www.leftovercurrency.com

P.s. this is not an advert or a company paying me to put this out there! This is all from my own experience and I hope this helps some of you out! 

P.p.s they accept circulating AND non-circulating coins ! 

A Quiet Day

Today saw me finish off sorting out my pile of unknown coins. I had a lot of help from my Instagram followers (@uneducatedcoincollector). What I did was post a couple of coins per day on there and said they could have £0.10 off their next order for each coin they guessed... so they win with a discount, and I win with my coin sorting! It's so handy to have my fantastic followers because I'm learning so much from them!

As you can see below these are a few of the money bags containing the various individual countries. If I only have one or two coins per country I don't bother reaching for a coin pouch and a folder because there's no point, yet! For example I currently have one Iceland coin. It's really not worth me buying pouches and starting an 'Iceland' folder! So what I'll do is wait years and years or until I have enough coins to start that collection! I'm going to do a blog post on my folder situation tomorrow (it's pretty cool!) so see you then!

Touchdown! My First Order To Italy ARRIVES!

I was literally so excited when Sam messaged me saying he'd received his coins in Italy. I'm so happy he put his trust in me and was my first EVER order! To be honest that takes a lot of guts. There are so many scammers out there after your money it's unbelievable but finally this proves I'm not one hahaha! I've been posting on Instagram and blogging for around 2 weeks now whilst advertising that I'm selling off my spares for £0.10 each and I'm pretty sure some people looked at me like 'hmmm naaaah I don't trust this guy!'. So massive credit to Sam for getting the ball rolling.

I've said in the past I'm making no money from selling my spare coins. The delivery charge (which was £2.00 in Sam's case) covers the time it takes me to deal with the order with you via email, the time it takes for me to find the coins in my draw, the time it takes to photograph front and back of every coin needed. That's before I have to pay for the envelope that the coins go in, the stamp and the time and fuel it takes me to get to the post office to post it! I'm charging peanuts.

I'm doing this out of pure leisure and I'm loving every second of it! Helping other people fill the gaps in their coin collections is just a fantastic feeling.

Packaging Arrives For Future Orders!

This morning I had an uncountable number of envelopes and also 20 large envelopes delivered! This is to keep up with any orders I'm getting! Any orders below 100 grams will be placed into a standard envelope and any orders between 100 grams and 750 grams will be put into the large envelope!

Anything order over 750 grams... well... I'll find something haha!

I Hate The Euro

The European Union is the most corrupt project of the 21st century and I absolutely detest it. If you want to know more about it type stuff into Youtube like 'The Truth About The EU' etc etc. It's run for big banks and big business and if you think it's not... debate me hahaha I've got the facts! Anyway I'm not going to get on my political soapbox in this blog post, I'm here for coins not politics!

The European Union created the Euro. Whilst some people may like to collect Euro coins I personally think the fact they swallowed up many countries national heritage and history and replacing it with THE EURO is outrageous! I may have a very inexperienced view on this but wow, the Peseta, Lire, Deutsche Mark... All gone!

That's why today I'm putting my foot down and exchanging them in (as they're still in circulation ha ha ha). I actually started sorting them into my collection, listing the spares on my blog for sale but nope, they're going!

I predict The European Union to collapse soon after Britain hopefully leaves in June, so if you've got Euro coins it may be worth holding onto them, they could be very rare in a few years time!