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Otago Daily Times, Issue 20006, 25 January 1927, Page 10

People seem now as anxious to get rid of gold coins as they were to acquire fliem when they were not to be had, paper money, apparentlv being now preferred (remarks the Auckland Star). Three people received half-sovereigns the other orening, one being a tram conductor, who accepted the coin as fare and gave change, and two restaurant diners, who tendered £1 notes for their meal. In the case 01 the latter, one of them was amazed to receive back the very coin he had parted with years ago. “It was early in the war,” he said, “and my last piece of gold. I memorised the date on the half-sovereign and said to myself. Til mark you for luck, you little beauty.’ So I did mark it, and in a peculiar way, and you may judge of my astonishment .when I got it back after all these years. It’s mine for keeps now; I'll not part with it again.” Truly there is no end to coincidence—or no end to the imagination of modern Munchausens! Under the early Princes of Wales, the "smitfiv of the Court” was an officer whose duty it was to attend to the shoeing of the Royal horses.