Total Coin and Coin in Circulation in the United Kingdom, 1868-1914
Forrest Capie, Alan Webber
Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Feb., 1983), pp. 24-39
doi:10.2307/1992138

      "EXISTING MONEY SUPPLY SERIES for the United Kingdom for the years 
1870-1914 are seriously deficient. Two components in particular have proved 
difficult to estimate: bank deposits and coin in circulation. This paper 
confines itself to estimating an annual series for all coin, though it is 
chiefly gold coin, for the years 1868-1914. Coin was a relatively 
significant part of total money supply, making up of the order of 15 to 20 
percent of the total of notes, coin, and bank deposits; but as we shall 
show, changing in its relative size over the period. An important finding is 
that previous estimates have been too high by around 20 percent in the first 
third of the period. This together with our upward revision of the bank 
deposits series [6] in the early years suggests a radically different 
profile for the currency/deposit ratio than previously has been believed.



            That serious problems attach to this estimation has long been 
recognized, and existing estimates have certain obvious deficiencies. The 
problems are threefold: the absence of a satisfactory starting point, the 
problem of coin melted down for bullion, and the unrecorded imports and 
exports of coin. We believe that we have now established a reliable base 
year estimate and the major advances of this paper are to use that base 
together with the Royal Mint's series of output and to account, in a more 
satisfactory manner than has hitherto been done, for the unrecorded 
movements of coin by migrants, and for melting."



            http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2879(198302)15%3A1%3C24%3ATCACIC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K









----- Original Message ----- 
From: "geoff carver" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2007 4:43 AM
Subject: age of coins in circulation


i heard a lecture recently, in which someone mentioned a small experiment, 
where he tallied the dates of the coins in the pockets of his acquaintances, 
and i was wondering if anyone has seen reference to anything more 
systematic? i know philip barker makes reference to the problems of trying 
to date the contents of someone's pockets based on the coins he tried to use 
to make a phone call, but i was wondering if there might have been a more 
systematic study done somewhere, sometime, and not necessarily by 
archaeologists (banks or mints, to guage the age of coins in circulation?)