The Three Wise Men (well, two at least)

The 3 young boys in the picture taken in the late 1960’s, of which I am one, were featured in a local news paper story of  3 young lads aged about 11 or 12 becoming avid coin collectors at such a young age. Numismatists they called us. Our parents were all very proud of us.

No. That was not what was going on at all. We were more like 3 entrepreneurs, one of the boys had been told a tale by an uncle that certain coins, in everyday use, were more valuable than others, we looked into this and it was true.

What we were actually doing, apart from checking our change,  was saving up our paper round and pocket money, going up to the bank and buying pound bags of pennies, you got 240 pennies in a pound in pre-decimal days. We had learnt that certain stamp marks on coins made them valuable such as ‘k’ and ‘kn’, a tiny little stamp next to the date. Also any Victorian coins were more valuable, especially if they were in good condition. We made quite a tidy profit as most were worth double, triple and quadruple their face value, and sometimes even more than that.

We usually sold them to local dealers and collectors who gave us more things to look out for. Any silver coins before 1952 had some real silver in them making them worth more in scrap value than face value, scraping coins of the realm is illegal, never the less, there was a waiting market for them. Victorian silver coins had an even higher percentage of real silver in them and so were worth even more.

We ended up with quite healthy bank accounts, soon to be depleted as we headed towards our teenage years with football and girls becoming the more important focuses of life.

Now, of the three boys in the picture above, one became a Scientist, one became an MP and one became a Caravanner,  can you guess which one is which ?