Rare British Coins Collecting

Collecting Rare British Coins is a fascinating hobby. Money is always interesting, and the fact that you can collect and hold the money in your hand that our ancestors used and spent thousands of years ago makes coin collecting one of the most historically satisfying hobbies there is. Until fairly recently you could potentially find a florin or a shilling in your change that might have gone back nearly a century.

The first £5 coin minted in 1826 as part of a proof set.

Coins tend to survive through time in a way that other artefacts do not because they are small, solid and normally hard wearing largely due to being made from non-ferrous metals that can survive long periods in water or wet soil. They are also sought after and searched for and even now, metal detectorists are regularly pulling coins from the earth where they might have sat since Roman times.

Rare British Coins  or numismatics also has a huge scope. You can choose to collect literally thousands of different types of coins. It would be difficult to build up a near complete collection of Rare British coins dating back to Roman times, but some have tried (and are still trying). If taking up coin collecting, it might be more achievable to focus your British coin collecting on a specific monarch, century or period and generally speaking, the more recent the coinage, the more obtainable it is.

Coins have been minted for all sorts of reasons in addition to providing us with a currency to exchange. Commemorative coins help us to remember and mark special occasions, notably crowns have traditionally been used in recent year to do this and many have been produced which while actually legal tender, were really intended to go to people interested in coin collecting, or maybe to get them thinking about taking up the hobby.

How to go about collecting rare British coins

Collectors of Rare British coins tend to look for condition above everything else and a pristine uncirculated or extremely fine specimen will be worth far more than a worn coin. However, if coin collecting on a budget,  you can still have an amazingly interesting time because in many cases it is the coins with the most wear that tell the most interesting story. It's amazing to think that you could be holding a Victorian shilling in your hand that might have been spent hundreds of times in shops of old or an old penny that has been worn down by the hands of thousands adults or children who might have spent it over and over again on sweets or on bread. I don't think any other area of antique or artefact collecting comes close to bringing history to life in the same way as numismatics can.

Kings Norton Penny - note the tiny KN stamped to the left of the date

Often it is the tiny details on a coin that seperate a common one from a rare and sought after example.

Some coins, for example, received limited runs at particular coin mints, and those mints may have left a mark on the coins to indicate where it was made. Should that mint have made a relatively small run of coins then those might end up being sought after while the general Royal Mint coins might be of little value (see the example on the left of a 1918 Kings Norton one penny).

The other thing that makes coins valuable of course is the base metal involved. Many rare British coins were made of silver and some of gold. Even if a coin is of no interest for those interested in coin collecting, it may still have value.

The gold sovereign is perhaps the most famous gold coin of all, having been turned into jewellery throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, to the general disapproval of polite society. Other gold coins are far more magnificent however, and gold five pound coins from Queen Victoria's reign are highly sought after. Not only are they very valuable because of the gold content, but they are simply stunning coins to behold and if you could afford to collect them, I am sure you would!

Do you need lots of money to start collecting Rare British Coins?

But don't worry if you do not have deep pockets because collecting rare British coins is a hobby that doesn't necessarily involve a lot of expenditure. There are lots of fantastic Rare British coins that you can collect and treasure that won't set you back the price of gold bullion. There are many interesting pre-decimal coins that can be bought fairly inexpensively (many below face value now that they can no longer be spent). There are also annual coin sets that can be collected including rare maundy coins that were given by the monarch originally to the poor (adding up in pennies to the age of the monarch), but latterly to deserving people who had done derserving charitable work through to freely available modern coin sets issued by the Royal Mint.  You could also collect special commemorative coins like crowns which were and as far as I am aware, still are legal tender, and some still are. Whichever British coins you have decided to collect, we have pulled together hundreds and hundreds of coins for sale to suit all types of collectors and all budgets to help you whether you ave just started coin collecting, or if you have been collecting for a long time.  Just choose from any option on the right of the page and get "digging" for rare British coins.

Other ways to start coin collecting

If you don't want to buy coins, you could get tourself a metal detector and look for you own. Metal detecting is a fascinating hobby in itself and could provide you with a means to find all manner of interesting old coins and artefacts. However, you must remember never to take a metal detector on to land that you haven't been given permission to search on, and especially never on any land of historical or archaeological interest because you could find yourself in trouble with the authorities or land owner. The best way to go about it would be to find a local metal detecting club and take it from there as they will be able to advise on the best way to go about it (and what equipment you need).  If you live near the coast, consider metal detecting on the local beach. The best times to detect are after a storm when the sand and shingle have been churned up. You need a special type of metal detector to detect on a beach which uses pulse technology. This allows you to penetrate your search through minerals which would play havoc with a normal motion detector that is normally used on grassland.

We hope you find the site useful. Have fun collecting Rare British coins!