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A CITY FOR NUMISMATIC ADVENTURES

BY HAROLD DON ALLEN CSNA LM-25-1

Whether your current numismatic priority is to learn or to acquire, the convention bourse floor, the high-profile coin auction, or the lavishly stocked retail outlet, all can present you with real choices and tough decisions. For the great thrill of the numismatic hunt, however, nothing can beat the coin offerings, both exhibits and "for sale" items, of a world-class city. This I recently confirmed by visiting the high points and exploring the byways of present-day London. I brought home a handful of inexpensive but intriguing items, plus ideas and insights to occupy me for many months to come.

Now, London need not be all that remote or inaccessible in this jet age, high costs currently relating as much to meals and accommodation as to the travel itself. So it's not inappropriate for me to share with friends and fellow-collectors something of what I recently learned and what I found.

The great magnet to draw and to hold the serious numismatist to central London is, of course, the venerable British Museum on Great Russell Street. Acknowledging numismatic science as an established and powerful research tool, important monetary displays are featured in galleries relating to various cultures. Further, a chronology of 4,500 years of monetary use is the basis for the overwhelming HSBC Money Gallery---from cowries, ingots, coined gold and silver, through Chinese Ming Dynasty paper money to preset-day coins, notes, bank cheques, credit and debit cards---culminating in the "smart cards" now entering service. Still further, "Brief Lives: Changing Currencies in Western Europe," a timely temporary exhibition, highlights the Euro (coins and notes) and the 12 "heritage" currencies which the Euro now succeeds. The British Museum also opens its renowned research facilities to established numismatic students. A letter of introduction is required.

At its legendary location on Threadneedle Street, the august Bank of England maintains a museum which I view as being particularly well suited to school trips and tour visits. However, the established "paper numismatist" will have many a pleasant surprise in store. A bank of issue since 1694, the Bank of England can display the goldsmith's receipts which were precursors of its own first notes, and traces its note designs through relatively recent times. Five familiar issues for general circulation since 1928 are treated in meticulous detail, with continuing enhancement of anti-counterfeiting devices necessarily a pervading theme. A sight to reward the dedicated "paper" enthusiast is a shiny face plate (4 across, 7 down) for the Bank of England current 50 pounds top value.

The Imperial War Museum also will be found to incorporate instructive numismatic elements-hardly surprising, as money frequently has been a weapon of war. Paper money, from United Kingdom Treasury Notes of 1917, which substituted for gold in circulation, to Japanese occupation currency for Malaya, are exhibited, in context. So are rationing and war savings memorabilia from the "home front" of two major conflicts, material which has had a significant collector following.

All three museums currently offer free admission-but imaginative and tempting gift shops. Who, though, would have imagined the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street to be selling charming little glass mice-fully stuffed with finely chopped paper money? In mine, I do believe I can spot most, if not all, current Bank of England denominations.

World-class coin and stamp dealers operate out of London, we all know. Stanley Gibbons, Ltd. (leading philatelists since 1856) showed me Canadian Victorian covers, and sold me superb holders for such as credit cards-a monetary interest that dates from my first Bank Americard, from my California student days. Spink (founded 1666) provided their latest "world paper" auction catalogue-a beauty, but leaning heavily to un-issued "specimens" which dampened my enthusiasm.

Several quite diversified "coin shops" are found in proximity to the British Museum. At one, I purchased an early "plastic" item-a ferry token, I suspect. Vecturist friends are checking it out. Also, in Chipping Norton, the Oxfordshire market town, I acquired a seventeenth century farthing, an Oxford innkeeper's token from an interval when change had been in short supply. A location with some personal relevance. An afternoon's research confirms that I can tell our grandchildren that Great Great Great Great Grandfather Allen had been a journeyman baker, and father of seven, in Chipping Norton when the Oxfordshire census taker had come calling in 1851.