WORN AND MUTILATED

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 62, 10 September 1924, Page 6

WORN AND MUTILATED

CALLING IN THE SILVER.

. Between £70,000 and £80,000 worth of worn and mutilated silver coins in circulation iv New Zealand have been collected by tho banks'in New Zealand. They are to be sent to the Royal Mint in exchange at face value for "new coins. The coips range from'the"threepenny bit w the portly crown. ~Tho' most worn tilver coins it has been found are six-' penccs and shillings. The five-shilling pieces figure among the worn and mutilated. Strange to say ] they are not popular, and people havo been •known l-> refuse them. Of. course, they are bulky, and' in those seemingly far off days when the sovereign and half-sove-reign, were circulating, one of these coins would be preferred as a matter'of convenience to their equivalents in silver crowns. With; the uncles and , aunts of the last generation the crown was a popular and economical birthday or other occasional gift to boys and girls. Childlen had no objection to the weight and size of the crown, .but it is a drug on the market. to-day. In a general way silver up to £2 is legal tender and cannot bo refused, but notwithstanding that the five-shilling piece-is often refused in change. Now some of them "possibly £15 or £20 worth, will return to the distant place of their birth the Royal Mint, after having passed 'from hand to hand until the image ard superscription on them is blurred or almost entirely worn away. The ecclesiastical uses to which it is believed threepenny pieces and sixpences are largely put will not account altogether for the decrepit condition of so much of the old money collected. No provision was made by the Royal Mint for the return of bronze money,' so that the results of friction on pennies used in "l\vo : up'\ or halfpennies worn thin in "shone-a-penny" cannot bo ascertained. Double-headed pennies used in "two-up" would not be officially regarded as worn or mutilated. coins

The exact origin of slavery cannot be Uiicod. ■ It. probably arose at an early period oE I lie world's history out. of ihe accident of capture in war. All fcho ancient, Oricnlul nations of whom there avo records, including the Jews, had their slaves,. ;. __„-- -■-.--- ■-