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ESQUESING HISTORICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER P.O. Box 51, Georgetown, Ontario, Canada L7G 4T1 January - February 1999 "No Canada" coin set honours nation's mint To celebrate its 90th anniversary, the Royal Canadian Mint is issuing an anniversary coin set, meticulously reproducing the reverse designs of the original 1908 coins. For collectors, the good news is that one of the coins contains a mistake unparalleled in Canadian coinage history, and this should create considerable interest in the whole set. Until the one-cent coin in this set was struck, no other Canadian coin ever omitted the name of the country. The bad news is that the antique finish the mint has used on the coins to simulate the aging process is probably the worst finish the mint has ever used on a collector set in its history. The set consists of five coins - the large one cent that circulated prior to 1920, the small "fish scale" 5 cents issued until 1921, and the 10-, 25- and 50-cent pieces. Both the originals and the 1998 versions of the last four coins are in sterling silver. The original one-cent piece was bronze, while the 1998 version is copper-plated on sterling silver... Instead of the original 1908 portrait of Edward VII, the anniversary sets uses the modern portrait of his great-granddaughter Queen Elizabeth II. On the reverse of each coin, the dates 1908-1998 appear... Total mintage for the set is 50,000 and they will be selling through coin dealers in the $100-plus range. Despite their appearance, with the odd-ball one-cent piece, they should sell quickly. The last time the mint made a similar mistake was in 1911, when the abbreviation DEI GRA (for Dei Gratia) was omitted from the first coins of George V. The omitted abbreviation, which still appears on our coins, indicates that the sovereign rules "by the grace of God." The public furor in the wake of the release of the 1911 Godless coins is credited by some historians as a factor in the defeat of the Laurier government later that year. -"Coins" by Robert Aaron, The Toronto Star, May 16. 1998 INSIDE THIS ISSUE CANADA'S MONEY page 2 ROYAL MINT OF ACTON page 3 SOCIETY NOTES page 4 ACTON HISTORICAL PLAQUE page 6 GEORGETOWN GIRLS' PIPE BAND page 7 HICKEN PROPERTY page 10 DOMINION SEED HOUSE page 11 Esquesing Historical Society Newsletter