It never ceases to amaze me that coins forever manage to turn up in different places. Forgetting a visit to a coin dealer, one rather obvious way to get foreign coins is to go to a foreign country or ask to someone who has just been to one. Tourists to most popular destinations will get to use that country’s coins and never manage to spend them all before they return. Many people will also have a few left over from the last time they went abroad, to work or holiday and maybe from a few times before that too. These are the simpler routes that coins can take from their country of use to the hands of a collector in another country, there are of course many less simple routes too.

   Someone from England might go to Jersey for a week’s holiday. They’ll notice that some of the coins in use there are Jersey coins and they are of the same sizes as our British coins. So they’ll bring a few back with them and perhaps a few weeks later they’ll spend them. Jersey’s coins are so similar to ours that any such pieces entering circulation in England will likely circulate for a few weeks or months until the days that someone actually notices they are different. With their foreign nature noticed, the coin will then quite likely be taken from circulation and could soon end-up with a “collector”. The coins of Guernsey, Gibraltar, the Isle of Man, the Falkland Islands and St. Helena & Ascension are also just like our British coins in all but design. Coins of Jersey, Guernsey, Gibraltar and the Isle of Man do occasionally appear in change in England as these place are all popular with British tourists and vice versa. Of course very few British tourists get to go to the Falklands or St. Helena & Ascension so I’ll assume that the 1998 5 Pence piece of the Falkland Islands I got from change a few months ago was due to a member of the British Armed Forces having served there recently.

   Other countries’ coins can also be found in circulation but on a much smaller scale, since it will rarely be so that any are the same as any British coins currently in circulation. Also, any smaller dimensional differences are easily picked up by mechanisms in vending machines and coin counting equipment.

   People are not always necessary for bringing foreign coins into this country. Some might come here with other goods/commodities as if by accident. At my place of work once, a Swiss 2 Franc coin turned up in a consignment of thousands of tiny parts from Switzerland. A careless packer in Switzerland ? Well one man’s loss is another man’s gain ! The piece soon found its way to the nearest coin collector. This coin weighed as much as 580 of the parts. Another piece I got through trading of goods was a less common 1 Yuan circulating commemorative coin from the People’s Republic of China. Around 10 years ago whilst at university, I mixed with people of many nationalities. A number were from Singapore, apparently it would have cost them more money to study in Singapore’s university than in England. A Singaporean friend got me this Chinese coin. They had got it from a man in one of the local “Chinese Supermarkets". (Food stuffs that my Singaporean friends could not buy in the “Chinese Supermarkets" they would have sent over from Singapore !). One can only assume that the man in the “Chinese Supermarket” got the coin sent to him from China along with the goods that he (or his supplier) would frequently import.

   What about dealers ? Where might they get all of their foreign coins from ? Of course they often get them from the public. If the public were a bit better educated on these things, then they might manage to get their spare coins straight to a dealer (but never mind...). Also many coins with a coin dealer will be from another coin dealer or perhaps from a coin collector. The other obvious source of coins for a dealer (or a collector) is a mint, for whom dealers are often a go between. Coins, especially “commemoratives” bought directly from a mint in a country other than the issuing country, will often never go to the country that has “issued” them - some collectors do not like that thought. So looking more at inexpensive coins that actually have seen some use - dealers have one other great source and that is charitable organisations.

   You must have often seen collection boxes in public places for numerous charities, some are specifically for foreign coins (for example in airports) and others are intended just for British coins - but either way both types end up with foreign coins in them. Other charities have smaller boxes that they ask people to fill at home, these ones are intended for British coins but of course there is nothing to stop foreign coins being included. The result of all of this is that charities get bulk quantities of foreign coins, mainly of types currently in use somewhere in the world, plus some obsolete types and various coin-like tokens etc.. These bulk quantities can often amount to a number of tens of kilograms. The best thing that the charities can do with all of these coins is to sell them to a dealer. The first thing a dealer will do is take out the higher exchange value pieces such as those that can easily be sent back to their country of origin. Lower denomination coins, those of lesser visited countries (e.g. many African and Asian countries), obsolete coins and also tokens will be left. These remaining pieces will then pass from one dealer to another in bulk bags, with each dealer (and/or his customers) taking out a few pieces to meet their own requirements. Whenever I look through such bulk coins it might take me half an hour or so to find what I want from each 10 kilogram bag but so long as I find one or two new bits I’ll be happy - that is most often the case.