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| Some
Numismatics Terms|Some Currency Trivia |
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Italy
is home to the world's oldest bank. The Banca Monte dei Paschi di
Siena was founded in 1472 as a pawnshop intended to help the poor
in the Tuscan city of Siena. Now Italy's seventh largest bank, it
has 1,478 branches, 603 of them in Tuscany.
Today it leads the Italian market for total sales of life insurance
at bank branches. Tuscany's leading bank, 95 percent of its customers
are small- and medium-sized companies. |
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The
Royal Australian Mint
The Royal Australian Mint in Canberra was established in 1965 to produce
Australia's coins for decimal changeover. Apart from striking coin
for everyday circulation, the Mint is recognized throughout the world
for the quality of the coins it produces for collectors.
The Perth Mint in Western Australia is the world's oldest operating
mint. Originally opened in 1899 as a branch of London's Royal Mint,
it was primarily established to produce coins from the gold being
amassed from the rich goldfields in the west. Today, it is most recognized
as Australia's precious metals mint.
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| Coin
Facts |
-
Codfish were depicted on many of the first coins of the infant
United States from 1776 to 1778.
- In
1940, silver coins fell from the skies on to the town of Gorky,
Russia. A tornado had lifted up an old money chest and dropped
the coins it contained as the wind carried it long.
- Guineas
were originally minted of gold imported from the Guinea Coast
of West Africa, hence their name. The guinea hasn't existed as
an actual unit of currency since 1813. The coin was first issued
in 1663, when the British crown authorized the Royal Mint to manufacture
20-shilling gold pieces "in the name and for the use of the
Company of Royal Adventurers with Africa." Forty-four of
the coins were the equivalent of one pound of gold.
-
In 625 B.C., metal coins were introduced in Greece. They replaced
grain - usually barley - as the medium of exchange. Stamped with
a likeness of an ear of wheat, the new coins were lighter and
easier to transport than grain, and did not get moldy.
- Rich
King Croesus of Lydians in Asia Minor issued the first money of
gold - an oblong piece - in the 6th century. Soon the Greeks began
minting money in the shape of discs, striking them with detailed
high relief. Romans introduced the familiar serrated edges of
today's coins as a way to discourage the practice of shaving off
thin slices.
- The
first paper notes printed in the United States were in denominations
of 1 cent, 5 cents, 25 cents, and 50 cents. The U.S. Department
of the Treasury first issued paper U.S. currency in 1862 to make
up for the shortage of coins and to finance the U.S. Civil War.
- The
U.S. Mint was authorized to produce one-cent copper coins on April
2, 1792. Originally, there were four designs struck: the "chain"
cent, the "wreathed" cent, the "flowing hair"
cent, and the "liberty" cent.
- When
using the first pay telephone, a caller did not deposit coins
in the machine. He or she gave them to an attendant who stood
next to the telephone. Coin telephones did not appear until 1899.
-
A study of American coins and currency revealed the presence of
bacteria, including staphylococcus, E. coli, and klebsiella, on
18 percent of the coins and 7 percent of the bills.
- According
to U.S. Treasury, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, there were
more than 10 billion pennies minted in the United States in 1998.
The actual number of coins produced, by denomination, was as follows:
pennies, 10,257,400,000; nickels, 1,323,672,000; dimes, 2,335,300,000;
quarters, 1,867,400,000; and half-dollars, 30,710,000.
-
Florence, Italy was the first city to mint its own gold coins
in 1252.
-
The penny and the Sacajawea dollar are the only coins currently
minted in the United States with profiles that face to the right.
All other U.S. coins - the half dollar, quarter, dime, and nickel
- feature profiles that face to the left.
- Cleopatra
was no older than 18 when she became the queen of Egypt. Despite
her glamorous image today, she is depicted on ancient coins with
a long hooked nose and masculine features.
- An
expert in testing coins is called a "shroff."
- If
you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have
$1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in U.S. coins
possible without being able to make change for a dollar.
- The
hobby of coin collecting and the study of coins is called Numismatics.
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| Some
Numismatics Terms |
- About
Good: a grading term for a coin that is so badly worn that
you can barely recognize the type and date.
- American
Numismatic Association: the leading organization for collectors
of U.S. coins.
- Appraisal:
an estimate of a coin's worth.
- Authentication:
determining whether a coin is real or not.
- Beaded
border: a decorative, outer ring of tiny raised beads found
on some coins.
- Carbon
spot: a small spot of corrosion or oxidation on a coin caused
by a spot of moisture. When you talk around coins - Say it, don't
spray it!
- Cent:
the U.S. coin valued at one-hundredth of a Dollar. Commonly known
as the Penny.
- Cleaned:
a coin that has dirt or toning removed with a cleaning agent.
Cleaning ranges from light to severe, depending on what is used
to clean the coin. Cleaning may disqualify a coin from being certified.
TIP: leave cleaning to the professionals, as cleaning generally
lowers the collector value of a coin.
- Clip:
the missing portion of the edge of a coin caused when coin blanks
are punched improperly out of metal strips.
- Clipped:
a coin that has a portion missing out of the edge because the
planchet was cut improperly or someone removed some of the metal.
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How
did coins get their names?
Most coins derive from Latin words, and are named after people, places,
or things.
Even the word coin, translates from the Latin "cuneus,"
meaning wedge, and was so named because early coins resembled the
wedges the dies used to coin coins. The word cent, from the Latin
"centum," meaning one hundred, a dime, from the Latin "decimus,"
meaning tenth, and the French franc, from the Latin "Franconium
Rex," meaning King of the Franks, are all examples of the naming
of money, which translates from the Latin word "mona," meaning
to warn!
The English pound, translates from the Latin "pondo," meaning
pound, or, to get more heavily into detail, from the Latin "libra
pondo," meaning a pound of weight. This method of naming coins
weighed heavily in naming of the Spanish peso and of the Italian lira.
A sense of fairness dictates that some coins bear the names of the
metals of which they are composed. Thus, a nickel is made of nickel.
The currency dollar, not always in paper form, originally hailed from
the silver mines of Bohemia, where Bohemians extracted silver for
the coins, and minted them in the town of Joachimsthal. Realizing
that the coin they termed the Joachimsthaler, was rather lengthy,
the Bohemians shortened the name, and called it the thaler. The thaler
eventually lost its lisp, and became our dollar.
Many countries used their word for crown, for example, crown, sovereign,
krone, krun, krone, corona to demonstrate that some crown authority
initially granted permission to mint them. Other countries named coins
in honor of their heros, such as the Panamanian balboa, after the
explorer Balboa, the Venezuelan bolivar, after one of it's national
heroes, and the Peruvian sol for the Spanish word for sun, after this
ancient Incan object of worship.
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| Some
Currency Trivia |
- By
the end of the U.S. Civil War, 33 percent of all U.S. paper currency
in circulation was counterfeit. On July 5, 1865, the Secret Service
was created as a part of the Department of the Treasury to help
suppress counterfeit currency.
- The
Cree Indians used smoking pipes as currency.
- The
first paper notes printed in the United States were in denominations
of 1 cent, 5 cents, 25 cents, and 50 cents. The U.S. Department
of the Treasury first issued paper U.S. currency in 1862 to make
up for the shortage of coins and to finance the U.S. Civil War.
-
You can fold a piece of U.S. currency forward then backward about
4,000 times before it will tear.
- Offa,
king of Mercia (757-796),.was considered the greatest Anglo-Saxon
ruler in the eighth century. He was responsible for established
a new currency based on the silver penny which, with many changes
of design, was the standard coin of England for many centuries.
- The
slang term for a dollar, "buck," likely came about in
the early U.S. frontier days when the skin of a male deer (a buck)
was a common currency.
- China
was the first country to introduce paper money in 812, but it
wasn't until 1661 that a bank (Banco-Sedlar of Sweden) issued
banknotes.
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