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UK: the path to a circulating thematic wildlife series

Started by <k>, February 12, 2024, 12:41:10 PM

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<k>

The wren farthing was just a timid semi-measure (I mentioned it upthread), and it was gone long before you were born. But otherwise, you see a split between the attitudes of officialdom and those of the public. In fact, Prince Philip and QEII did move with the times in various ways. Jody Clark's portrait of the late Queen showed her smiling. I was quite surprised by that. Also QEII admitted that she would never have made her Paddington video or anything like it while the Queen Mother was alive, because the Queen Mother would have disapproved of that for a royal.

It's true that the aristocracy are notorious for hunting animals as game. Whether Prince Philip ever actually went fox hunting, I do not know. However, I've read several of the minutes of the Royal Mint Advisory Committee meetings, of which Prince Philip was President, and he was far from being the stuffy reactionary that the Press generally caricatured him to be. Here is an example from 1971: "At the request of the Seychelles Government the design for the 1 cent had also been altered to portray a Shorthorn bull in place of a Zebu bull. All the designs were considered acceptable, though the President regretted the substitution of the less interesting Shorthorn for the Zebu bull."  See:  Seychelles: unadopted designs of 1972.

Different members of the public have their own various views about what is a suitable subject, of course. Some stamp collectors objected to the 1979 stamp issue featuring classic children stories (Alice in Wonderland, etc.), then later some objected to the Rupert Bear UK stamp issues of the early 1990s. But in recent years in the UK, coin collecting has become quite popular, no doubt spurred by all the circulating commemoratives these days, and what I call "heptagon mania", with reference to the 50 pence commemoratives.
Visit the website of The Royal Mint Museum.

See: The Royal Mint Museum.