The Very Finest Irish Coins...


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Obverse of 1806 Irish Farthing
Obverse of 1806 Gilt Irish Farthing
Reverse of 1806 Irish Farthing
Reverse of 1806 Gilt Irish Farthing

Countries
Irish Coins - Pre-1826

The earliest Irish coins were similar to their Anglo-Saxon counterparts, and struck to a similar or identical standard. During period of English overlordship over Ireland, the monarchs of England at various times tinkered with the fineness of Ireland's coinage relative to England, usually by debasing it slightly relative to English currency to prevent its export, although occasionally, medieval monarchs such as John and Edward III were not above imposing policies with the opposite aim of draining Ireland of silver in order to pay for their wars with France. The designs were quite similar to those of English coins, but with distinctive obverses and/or reverses to denote their Irish origins.

As a consequence of the English Crown's general policy of keeping Irish currency slighly less fine than its English counterpart, an English Shilling was worth 13 Irish Pence, as opposed to 12 Pence to the Shilling in England. This rate of exchange was fixed thus in 1701. Despite this, Irish coins maintained similar dimensions to their English counterparts, which, given their fairly slight difference in value was not altogether suprising. In the late 18th to early 19th century, Ireland suffered from shortage of small change in common with Great Britain, and, as was the case with Britain, its merchants and tradesmen issued tokens to cover up the shortfall in change, with the Bank of Ireland issuing silver tokens, as was the case with the Bank of England in Britain.

In 1801, the Act of Union formally incorporated Ireland into the United Kingdom. However, with the Napoleonic Wars and the coinage crisis in both countries still occupying the minds of the United Kingdom's politicians, it would be another two and a half decades before Ireland's monetary was incorporated into the Sterling Standard. A major currency reform in Britain in 1816 and a massive recoinage which took place over the subsequent years paved the way for the British Government looking into the issue of unifying the two currencies. Still, it was not until 1826 when Ireland's separate currency was abolished and replaced with a uniform UK currency based around the Pound Sterling, which remained the official currency of Ireland until the creation of the Irish Free State in the 1920s.

Individual Irish Pre-1826 Coins for Sale

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