My Coin Collection

I sold my last coin collection on eBay a few years ago, on a whim. I asked for the same price it cost me: $1.98 (except I listed in USD instead of CAD. A woman bought it for her husband, and she paid $1.98 US, plus shipping). Here's my latest accumulation:

This one tallies $3.46 Canadian. Many are valid Canadian or US coins---like the Georgia peach quarter (1999) and the Liberty anniversary quarter (2001). There's a Cypriot 20-something piece I got instead a loonie (Canadian dollar coin), a beautiful Dutch 25-ct piece that came in my change as a 10-cent piece (dime). My favourites are the two Trinidad and Tobago one-cent pieces with the hummingbird. (Two!?) There are coins from Australia, Philippines, Bahamas, Barbados, UK, and Slovenska Republika. The oldest is a 1937 Canadian one-cent piece, with George VI. I also have a QEII one-cent piece from 1956, my birth year. And last week I picked up a Canadian centennial penny (from 1967; the one with the bird which I forget what it is). Last year I picked up a very small aluminum coin from a depressed Eastern European republic that looked exactly like a Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) token (worth about $2.50 per ride at the time, now 2.75 or so). I think I tossed it, or I would include it here.

I haven't sold anything on eBay for a long time. My family started giving their "valuable" items to sell (the inscribed books dating from about 1892 to 1920 and the music sheets from the 1920s to 1940s did make quite a bit of money for my mom's church). And my brothers' items that they took from our uncle's "estate" brought in a few hundred dollars, which was surprising.

After looking at the Dutch coin I got to thinking about our Canadian designs. The Dutch coin is stylish to say the least. The image of Beatrix is more impressionist than representative (I can go through my Canadian coin jar and find at least 3 updates to QEII, the latest with jowls and wrinkles---nothing like the wild and sexy horsewoman I saw once on a Caribbean paper bill).

Canadian 25-cent pieces (AKA quarters) represent whatever is happening in Canada for the year and there might be several issues. They're all basic MOR art, in my opinion---an inukshuk (which we know only as lawn decorations here in To.); war vets and the young'uns; skiers (for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics). You could hang them over your sofa. Sometimes there might be something Indian, but again it's symbolic---nobody's doing anything about education, health, housing, employment on the reserves.