Nassau (D'Haiti) paper weight.

spoilr

Four coins encased in acrylic, only date is on lower right hand coin (1958)
Edited to add photo.

lordmarcovan

Here's your photo. You might wanna edit again to add your price, if you're selling it.

spoilr

Need to apologize!
Should have posted on world coin forum to find out what it might be worth before I
brought it over here.
Skip

lordmarcovan

It's pretty. A lot of the Caribbean countries had paperweights and serving trays and stuff like this done with coins in them in the late 1950s. There were also a number of ashtrays and items with pictures of coins done in metallic gold and silver paints, which were pretty attractive. My grandmother had some from Bermuda.

Interestingly, the coins (or pictures of coins) don't always correspond to countries issuing the souvenirs. Sometimes they're just homeland British coins, as appears to be the case with the halfpenny and threepence in this paperweight. And I think this is probably from Nassau in the Bahamas, as counterintuitive as that may seem with a Haitian coin in the mix. Of course since the Bahamas didn't get their own coinage until 1966, that sort of makes sense. I think we can pretty conclusively date this paperweight to before 1966.

Value? Depends on how much somebody likes it. I'd say less than ten dollars, but you never know.

spoilr

Lord M
Thanks much for the info.
Never thought of it as being pretty but yes I agree.
Now you've gone and got my interest up in this piece.
Am I correct that the coin in the upper right corner is the threepence and the lower left
is the halfpenny and what is the upper left?
To make matters worse now I'm wanting to know what the dates of the other three are
and for a moment thought about trying to split it apart just to find out.
Foolish thought! More fun in not Knowing.
Skip

1960NYGiants

The coins appear to be:

Upper left - UK 3 pence
Upper right - Eastern Caribbean States or Jamaica or Jersey penny
Lower left - UK half penny
Lower right - Haiti 10 centimes

LochNESS

I would not spend the time breaking this apart unless for educational purposes (to learn more about the coins themselves). The sale value will most likely not increase even if the coins are removed unharmed, and chances are they would be harmed during the process. I say this because, unless the hidden face has a mint error or some unknown variety, these are common types.

My guess is that tourists received (or bought) these as souvenir gifts while vacationing in the Bahamas. It strikes me as the sort of thing one might find in a "gift shop."

lordmarcovan

Yes, these are the sort of coins one can often find in any dealer's 25¢ pick bin, so it's definitely not worth hacking them out of a 50-year-old piece of Lucite. It's worth more as a vintage souvenir paperweight than as a group of coins, anyway. And even as such, it isn't worth a lot, but it's neat, and like I said, pretty.

A classy paperweight, even if it does tease us by hiding one side of the coins.

lordmarcovan

He just up and sent this paperweight to me as a gift, which was mighty nice. I'm going to give it to my mother, in memory of the time we spent in Nassau when I was a kid and we lived on a sailboat, hopping around the islands.

Public thanks to spoilr! I'm gonna send him some fossil shark teeth in return.

ajaan

Nice gesture.

LochNESS

Agreed. And to a worthy individual, one who you can always count on to "pay it forward" as they say.