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?)
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