From 1929, in fact. The tails is a pair of maple leaves, framing “Five 5 Cents” - not bilingual.
Very cool!
That really is interesting!
Sometimes, here in the US, I still get “wheat ear” pennies, which were discontinues in the 1950’s. But that’s a seldom thing.
That’s fantastic, Northern Piper! I think the old Queen Elizabeth pennies with the ribbons in her hair are cool enough to begin with, and I squee if I get so much as a George VI.
I got a George VI penny a month or so ago, which happens maybe once a year. I’m really surprised to see a coin from 1929 in regular circulation - where has it been all these years?
** Matt**, do you have any idea what the symbolism of the ribbons in the early QEII coins is? Is it meant to be a Roman-Greek Classical look?
I still get a wheat cent about once every 12-18 months. I put them in my oddball coins bin.
I’ve heard that the profile alternates facing left or right with each change of monarch, or is that only English coins?
I’ve found a few of those early QEII Canadian pennies but not anything as cool as a 1929 nickel lately, so I’m coveting Northern Piper’s find a bit.
A shame we Brits decimalised in 1971 and resized the 5p and 10p in 1991. Until the latter, old shillings and two-shillings were interchangeable with 5p and 10p coins. Really old silver was out of circulation, though, because it contained real silver. Pre 1971, you could occasionally see old pennies from Edward VII or even the late years of Victoria; I certainly saw at least one 1896 Victoria penny, worn almost smooth.
Yes, we follow the same pattern:
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My George V coin has him facing left.
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Edward VIII would have faced right, but Canada didn’t have time to mint any before he abdicated (although I think Polycarp posted a link awhile ago that suggested that Edward wanted to face left too, out of his personal vanity).
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George VI also faces left, even though there were never any Edward coins.
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All of our coins of Elizabeth II face right.
Here’s what my George V nickle looks like: link.
I wonder what crown it is that he’s wearing?
I see I was wrong is saying it wasn’t bilingual. English on the tails, Latin on the heads.
One of the interesting things about the Elizabeth coins is that the image has been regularly updated, so the series starts with her as a young woman (the one with ribbons Matt mentions) and progresses along as she’s aged, to her current matronly image.
Nice. I usually feel lucky just to have found a Mountie. I don’t save them, though.
That’s a beautiful coin. I don’t know what it is about old coins but there’s just a special charm to them that’s hardly found in anything minted today. I could spend hours going through my paltry collection and days in a real store. They were just often prettier with more ‘romantic’ themes before, royalty, indians, exotic or iconic animals like the buffalo, etc. Part of it is probably because of the interest in them my grandmom first shared with me. Then there’s the wondering about what history each has had, who held them, hoarded them, purchased what dire staples with them or maybe even fought over them.
If only walls and old coins could talk.
Dwarves.
Dwarves and dragons.
Yeah, I get worked up over a simple wheatie too.
There are people who go to banks and somehow get boxfuls of “silver” coins and search them for the rare true silver coin.
I once got an 1870 Indian head penny in my change, and also a 1938 buffalo nickel.
Needless to say, I have not re-spent them.
I think it’s a fictional crown modeled off of the “Tudor crown” that was used in heraldry at the time. The crowned effigies of George VI and Elizabeth II* also used a similar crown.
*Neither were used in Canada, which was “promoted” to the uncrowned portrait when the unissued Edward VIII portraits were being designed. The division between Commonwealth countries and non-self-governing entities persisted into the 1960s, when the Queen said she was fine with all coins using the new version originally prepared for decimal coins (I believe there was a little embarrassment when the first country to introduce it was Rhodesia).
I got a US cent from the Twenties a while back. I wondered whether it had ever been spent in a speakeasy. One can also wonder to what extent it was circulated in the intervening decades, perhaps spending part of the Great Depression in a bank reserve vault, then given out as part of a family’s first real paycheck in years, used to buy a train ticket to the city, then spending a few years circulating around a WW2 munitions factory in Pittsburgh, then taken on a road trip and spent in Disneyland, then circulating for a while around the LA metro area, then taken and spent on the East Coast by a West Coast tourist, then given to me in change.
The oldest coin I’ve ever gotten in my change was a 1900 Newfoundland 20-cent piece that someone substituted for a quarter (it’s very slightly smaller). It has a very young Victoria on the face - no updating here! I also have some 1940s Canadian and Newfoundland pennies, with a crowned George VI on the Newfoundland ones in place of the uncrowned portrait on the Canadian coins.
I get all happy about “funny nickles” the 12 sided ones. I usually find about one a year, and if its been a while I get kind of sad about it. My son is pretty interested in coins and coin collecting right now, I am kind of bummed I didnt get a chance to take him to the Winnipeg Mint this year.
I’d think having a 1900 20-cent piece as a curiosity was well worth a quarter in today’s money. 
And now I’m nostalgic for the old 3d coin, which was also dodecagonal and about the size and weight of the modern £1 coin, and seems to match it more closely in buying power with every year that passes. Or even outmatches it depending on the standard you measure by; I’m sure you could get The Beano for 3d some time during my life, and it’s now £1.50 IIRC.