Right, why is it illegal to deface coins? One of the reasons was because of 'clipping' which was prevalent in during Tudor and Stuart England (actually clipping was also illegal during the Romans and on wards but as I understand it the main law we have now was passed during the Tudor and Stuarts - sorry digressing).
Right, clipping was where a small amount of the edge of a coin was clipped off and put to one side. Up until recently (mid 1700s if I'm right but don't shout at me), coins were made of semi-precious and precious metals. So, if you clipped a small amount from each coin you could end up with some metal which was commercially resellable. Clippers got greedy and would clip off too much of the metal at one time so that that the coin was severely mis-shaped and as the value of the coin was in the metal - it was now no longer worth the face value. This and the eventual fall in metal prices moved the UK to change the metal that it used for it's coins to base metal as a silver sixpence was then worth more than sixpence and either they devalued the coinage or they reduced the size of the coin to meet the value which meant we would have had really small coins. So, that's one of the reasons why it was illegal to deface a coin. If I remember rightly, clipping was punishable initially by removal or breaking of fingers, then briefly by removal of hand, then transportation or death. It was taken that seriously. - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
