Thames Tunnel Medals

A few years ago I picked up a series of 4 medals by the 19^th century medallist William Joseph Taylor commemorating the construction of the Thames Tunnel which was completed in 1843. The tunnel was made possible by an innovative construction technique developed by Isambart Marc Brunel and took 22 years to complete. An interesting side note, the entryway to the tunnel is currently being developed as a new underground arts auditorium and performance space.

William Joseph Taylor opened his shop as a die sinker, medallist, and engraver in London in 1829. He created the dies (and provided the press and coining shop) for some of the early Australian issues as well as coins an patterns for Haiti and Liberia. He struck a good number of medals, among which we find the commemorative medals for the Thames Tunnel.

The obverse of each of these medals shows the bust of Sir Isambart Marc Brunel, with the reverse on 3 of the medals showing the entrance to the tunnels, the final medal has a text reverse listing the amount of funds expended by the initial proprietors of the tunnel, and the additional money supplied by a grant from Parliament. The medals range from 44mm to 24mm in diameter.

Been gone so long, I've been gone so long.

Hey folks, still hanging in there dropping the occasional coin on the table. A lot of water under the bridge since I last posted. I've been more and less active in collecting and selling the odd coin to support my collecting habit. Then a few years ago I opened a shop up with a friend. Mostly to buy scrap gold when prices were climbing out of sight. Did OK for a while until the market tumbled.

A side effect of buying gold is buying coins. If you read my older posts you know I'm mostly a collector of ancient coins. Well now I've had to learn about US and foreign coins and a bit about currency as well. I started taking the excess to a local club's bourse (that is, coin show) to sell them. After a bit a friend from a local coin club started joining me and selling coins and supplies too.

Things just spiraled up for a bit from there. The shop closed when prices fell and I moved into some inexpensive office space. I ramped up the shows until we were doing 3-4 a month. Not really sustainable while working full time. I've cut back to only 1 and sometimes 2 a month now. That leaves me enough time for some of my other hobbies (more on that later) while still allowing me to indulge my coiny side.

Here is a pic of one of the other things I'm doing now. Again, more on this later.

Well, way too long

Since I've dropped in here to write. Just a quick note. I've been organizing my coins and stone collections again. I have to do that once in a while, cataloging and reviewing what I've not looked at in a while. I can't wait until the renovation project we are doing is complete. I'll finally have a dedicated space for my collections and my library, but what a job! I found an excellent reduced follis of Constantine I that I hadn't even taken out of the envelope last night. I wonder what other surprises abound!

Still at it

Well the uncleaned coins are selling as well on ebay as ever. My reservations about the site continue, but I just can't seem to get the sales anywhere else. I have sold a few nicer coins in my ebid store. I've been posting things there at fixed prices and that seems to work ok, just that sales average 1-2 per month. I know ebay would give me a faster turnaround (at higher cost) but I still want to limit my involvement. I've launched sales on Bonanzle, Etsy, and Artfire now and that is doing, well, nothing. I figure it increases my exposure though and so does slipping a business card with my website address in each package I send. Perhaps I can divert buyers away from ebay! The lapis adventure continues with steady sales. I'm thinking about another order of gems to increase my variety. I'll definately be pulling out some old stock and listing it. Some of it has never been offered on the internet.

Wow, it's been a while!

So I jump back into this as the Summer ends. It has certainly been some time since I have posted. I've gotten back into selling uncleaned ancient coins on eBay (horrors!). I had tried to stay away since they tend to nickle and dime you for everything. I sell my surplus coins mostly on ebid but tend to stay with the nicer ones there and I don't have a lot of traffic. (which generally suits me, I hate to part with any of them my precious)

My friends know I'm allergic to buying things retail, sometimes I tend to go overboard. So now I have a few tons of Lapis Lazuli, a lovely blue gemstone, sitting in my garage. Nowhere to put the convertible now! So I'm onto the selling sites with a vengeance. I've even gone so far as to throw up my own storefront: www.benzgemz.com so far it is just rock but I'll eventually add coins and other stuff. I do have all these uncleaned and I had no venue to move them!

Hope to be posting again soon.

Well I took the time to count a few more cents for the cent project today. I pulled out the bag of 1969s and went through them. A total of 45 and I was surprised to find that 33 were from the Denver mint.

Surprised that is until I pulled out my copy of the Red Book and looked them up. That was a bumper year for the Denver mint with 4,002,832,200 cents minted there. Nearly 4 times as many as at Philadelphia (I had 11) and San Francisco only minted a little less then 3 million of which I found 1. It was also interesting to note that although several of my 1959 cents were full red and AU in condition, the 1969 cents were all well worn.

So I've been counting pennies tonight. Quite a while ago I signed up to be a volunteer for the Cent Project. An effort to get a picture of cents in circulation around the country. Volunteers bought $50 worth of circulated cents at banks and counted it, sorting mints and varieties, then turned in their data for publication at the project's website http://www.thecentproject.com/ .

At least that is how it is supposed to work. 5000 cents is a lot to sort by year and count. (I had to hit 2 banks to get that many too) I got as far as a preliminary sort by the last digit of the date. Judging by the lack of updates to the website I am not alone! Seriously, I have no idea if this project went forward at all, but there are no new posts since the count was declared on.

So tonight I started on my bag of nines. I found 1959, 1969, 1979, 1989 and 1999. No surprises here, the smallest group was the '59s and the largest the 99's (I bought the coins in December of 2007 so no 09's.) I also was pleased to note a couple of 1919s (P & D) and the real surprise, a 1889 Indian Head! So far I've only sorted the 16 1959 cents into 13 P and 3 D. I'm saving the larger amounts for later. Eventually I will mail in my counts if anyone is collecting them anymore, and in the meantime, I will publish them here.