1919 UK sixpence

[villa66]

From the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, a 1919 sixpence struck in .925 silver, 19.5mm in diameter and weighing 2.83g. The final year that only sterling silver sixpences were coined.

Plenty of coins worldwide are reputed to bring good luck…the Japanese 5-yen piece for one, or the American penny or the German pfennig, or holed coins—especially holed silver coins—the dished Italian “gobbini,” and certain Chinese cash coins, to name only a few. In the English-speaking world, though, the good-luck champ has to be the British sixpence.

1919. War’s end. Returning soldiers. Reunited sweethearts. And in their thousands, new marriages.

Which brings us to the sixpences’s particular claim to fame, good luck in marriage. The rhyme talks of the bride’s apparel, and comes in several different versions, one of which goes: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a silver sixpence in her shoe.”

But this 1919 sixpence has seen considerable handling. And it’s evenly worn, which suggests a normal circulating career, although perhaps—given the longevity of so much British silver—a slightly abbreviated career. This piece certainly doesn’t have the look of a sixpence that was slipped into a bride’s shoe in the early postwar, and then tucked away in a small velvet bag or a special pocket, or maybe in the corner of a dresser drawer or the top tray of a jewelry box. No, no 1919 or 1920 or 1921 wedding for this sixpence.

WWI was a demographic disaster. Many, very many European women of that time would never find men to marry. And I think as a wedding accessory this 1919 sixpence—and whatever married good luck it might have supplied—went unused.

v.

[KarlAntonMartini]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yi1ODxJI9E - by John Rutter. It is the best song on a single coin I know. Best regards, KarlAntonMartini