A €10 purchase

Syracusian

I was browsing the unsold lots of a local auction that had nothing interesting for me, not even one single lot among the ~1000 that had been auctioned over the last weekend, more out of boredom than a secret hope to find something desirable. Besides, I had already looked at the lots prior to the auction and it was one of those that the auctioneer wants to get rid of his accumulated junk.

And yet, something interesting was there, in front of me, unsold under the "British tokens" category. Priced at €10 , it was still more expensive than several lots that had a lower starting price including a few where the auctioneer was asking for an offer, as low as one euro.

"Keep me and you will never be broke" reads the obverse, with the name of the mineral water's producer on the reverse , that had an encased 1939 VFish farthing. I thought that it was too cool to pass. 😊

Sapyx

The British equivalent of the "lucky penny" encased coin. Farthings never had quite the same "It's good luck to have one" superstition that American cents had, but the size was similar so the American machines would work with farthings with little or no adaptation needed.

Needless to say, that from a global point of view, the British ones are far less common.

coinkat

I like it-

realeswatcher

Encased pennies (or in this case, farthings) are always fun!! I used to always to buy them if cheap with red.

but the size was similar so the American machines would work with farthings with little or no adaptation needed.

Japanese 10 yen used to fool parking meters and such in the 80s into thinking they were quarters back when they were about 3.5 cents exchange-wise.

lordmarcovan

I like it! I’ve seen a great number of similar encased pieces with US Indian and Wheat cents, but this is the first British one I’ve seen.

Interestingly, while metal detecting here on Saint Simons Island, Georgia (which is 1,000 miles/1,600 km from the Canadian border), I once dug up a 1914 Canadian large cent encased in an aluminum (or maybe zinc) ring like that.

Unfortunately the encasement ring had fared poorly in the ground over 75+ years and crumbled into corroded bits when recovered, never yielding any readable text. I would have loved to know what it said. The coin itself was in decent shape, though.