On another web site a discussion developed that might interest readers on this site. It follows:
Dear British Museum:
Please forward my communication to the coin [numismatic, if you must use the word] department.
On my opera web site, we
had a discussion on who is ruler of
England: Elizabeth or Francis, both Second of that name. I added an incident from my early coin collecting days. On second thought, I thought that an eyewitness account of the promulgation of the 3-penny
bit of Edward
VIII into the
hands of some collectors and many non-collectors might interest historians of British coins at your institution.
Letter excerpt follows
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You like royal chit-chat. Here's some for you to share with your web buddies.
I used to know one
Thomas Warfield [that name] from Baltimore [right city], Maryland [right State]. He
had a second cousin or cousin,
Wallace [right woman]. Tom was a coin dealer, and I have collected coins since grade school. Tom told me a story about the financial brilliance of
his cousin-by-marriage, "Duke," as some of the Warfields called the deposed Edward
VIII.
On the night he resigned the crown, the deposed Edward, or
his aide, chucked into
his bags a pouch -- a bag mind you -- of pattern 3-penny bits. These showed the
portrait of Edward
VIII. Of all the treasures he could have looted, this was the most clever.
Later in life, the Windsors got hard up at times. When they absolutely
had to pay a bill, where did Edward go? To Tom Warfield. The three-penny
bit contained the only
portrait of Edward
VIII ON A COIN that the Royal
Mint slip past the British Museum. I remember the 1967 or 1968 American Numismatic Association convention in Washington, D.C. well.
Tom knew I was collecting one coin of each English monarch from William I to Elizabeth II. [I never did find an Edward V -- yes, Edward V -- they are
rare.] Tom waltzes up and says, "Lookie here." He
had two Edward
VII portrait 3-penny bits. "Wally's godd'a have new clothes, and Duke needs
money." Tom
had one coin that
had a scratch, for which he was getting $10,000 for Duke and $2,000 for himself. All cash -- no paper trail ever on these bits-o-history. "Some woman will give me $20,000 for the perfect one," quoth Tom. "I get an $4,000 on top of that as my cut. I'll bet I could nave asked for $5,000 -- she wants the coin so bad."
Hay, $5,000
per annum was a
good wage at the time.
Recently, I have read several
auction catalogs which featured the "
rare," legendary, "perhaps 10 in private
hands" 3-penny
bit of Edward
VIII. The estimates are over $50,000. Look, the British Museum says "
Rare" means less than 10 to 20 items known. "
Scarce" means less than 50 known. I know old Tom sold more than 50 Edward
VIII 3-penny bits to filthy rich Americans, most of whom did not collect coins.
Cheers,
John Ryan
letter to I.G. ends
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Tom Warfield maintained a palatial coin store in Baltimore, where I grew up. I am a native Washingtonian, not a Baltimor-on. I
had visited Tom's
shop when I was a teenager, and he was delighted to I was
still collecting coins. I asked him about an Edward V -- he just laughed. I learned that Tom could get hold of the rarest and most sought after coins on earth, for a
price naturally. I often wondered if Duke and Wally helped him. [That's what they were known in in the authentic Baltimor-on dialect of English.]
Well -- Cheers
Follibus Fanaticus
