Coin of the Month: 1717 Sicily grano

2018 marks my 10th anniversary in Numismatics. Hard to believe it's been that long....even though I've been mostly out of the hobby for the past few years, I have not been totally out of it, so I'm counting it as ten full years.

I have decided that for my 10th anniversary, I'm going to try to add something new and interesting to my collection every month. That'll be a lot more than in the past few years, where I mostly just got new quarters found in circulation.

For January, I have something much older than I expected to get. It was a gift from a friend on the Collector's Universe forum.

It's a little rough, so I am not exactly sure if the obverse scan is right side up or not.

Here are some photos I took. The obverse is through the flip it came in so not great. I will keep trying. I have not tried with my photo studio yet, these were taken with my smart phone.

If I can get better photos with my studio setup I will post them in the future.

Still good finds to be found in circulation- 1920 cent!

Almost surely all three of these came from a local gas station. The 60-D and 59 are in just about perfect condition. The 1920 is low grade but it's still great to get a 97 year old coin in circulation.

Sorry the pictures are not better, still trying to figure out how to get good coin pictures on my new phone.

2017 P cent

I was quite surprised to get the first 2017 Cent and see that the P has now been added! The P mintmark was added to the other coins in 1980, but the cent went without all these years. Now, no longer.

I've been kind of "out of the loop" on the hobby so I didn't know this was coming until I got it in hand...and that was sometime back in April.

King Edward I Medal

This came from the same person who sent me the Green medal. Unfortunately this one has some issues, as are clearly visible in the photo. Yes, another photo post instead of scans.

Again I don't know where it came from or when it was issued. But I am pretty sure it's copper.

Nathaniel Green Medal

A friend gave this to me years ago. At the time, I didn't know the subject of the medal was a blood relative, but he is!

Actual pictures, not scans, today. I don't know when it was issued or even what country (France?) it was issued in, or what metal it's made out of.

Col. E.H.R. Green

I just today found out that Col. E.H.R. Green is my 16th Cousin 4 times removed. Very cool! It doesn't serve any practical purpose to know but it's a cool bit of trivia for a history buff like myself.

One from Every Country #15: Belgium

Belgium is a small country, but the coinage has proven to be one of the most common countries found in the mixed coinage by the pound that I like to purchase. I've gotten 54 coins from Belgium, ranking it well in the top 10 in most populous countries in my collection.

Of course, it doesn't hurt Belgium's total coinage numbers that unlike most countries, there are multiple versions of most every coin issued every year, one in French and one in Flemish.

The frank is the most common, and in the mixed-by-the-pound I have built most of my collection through, I have gotten franks ranging in age from 1950 to 1995. I chose the 5 frank as the coin for this project solely because it scanned the best. The frank used the same obverse design.

Belgium is one of the countries now using the Euro, so they have abandoned the frank that had served them well since the 1830s.