When I moved in to my house, the yard was a wasteland and the soil stony and filled with trash. Since growing things is one of my favourite activities, I got down to sieving the soil to get the basics of gardening in place. My suburb is one of the oldest in the city so all sorts of coins turned up while digging. The coins themselves are pretty well used and common so they aren't valuable even though some are more than 100 years old but they paint an interesting picture of the history of South Africa.
| Penny 1917, copper | Tickey 1920, silver |
|---|---|
 |  |
 |  |
The oldest coins that I found in my soil are these British coins, a copper Penny from 1917 and a 1920 silver thruppence, which were called Tickeys here. George V had quite the moustache!
In the late 1800s, Britain had two colonies in the South and East and the Boers (Afrikaners) had two Republics in the North. Very large gold and diamond deposits were discovered in the Boer republics, leading to a gold rush and an influx of diamond diggers. Naturally, Great Britain soon decided to go to war over these resources. Two bitter guerilla wars were fought but eventually the British won and in 1910 all 4 territories were combined into the Union of South Africa and made part of the British Commonwealth. In 1923, a Royal mint started producing South African coins that had the heads of the king and queen of England, depending on the date, on one side and unique South African designs on the other.
| Quarter Penny 1955, copper | Tickey 1943, silver | Sixpence 1952, bronze |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
Quarter penny, Tickey, and sixpence with the heads of King George VI and Elizabeth II on them. The 3D and 6D coins are very worn but take note of the bundles of sticks on the coin. Each bundle represents a cent and the 4 sticks may denote the quarter denomination, since south Africa had quarter pennies at the time.
In 1948, an Afrikaner nationalist government came to power and in 1961, South Africa became a republic, left the commonwealth, changed to the decimal system and adopted a new currency, the Rand, with the new coins bearing the head of Jan van Riebeeck. 1961 is also the year that the Afrikaners implemented the grand project of Apartheid. Although segregation always existed, nationalist Afrikaners in power took it to the level of white supremacy.
| Sixpence became 5 cents | Silver, 1961 |
|---|---|
 |  |
Van Riebeeck was the Dutch governor who established the first European colony at the Cape, although it was later sold to the British. Afrikaners are the descendants of these early settlers so it was very much a proclamation of of identity and direction. Notice also the bundles of sticks (fasces) - a symbol of political fascism from 1922, the year that Mussolini rose to power - and the motto "Unity is Strength". While Afrikaner nationalists admired fascist strongmen and there were Nazi sympathisers among them, the Nazi Germany connections were more rooted in grievances against Britain for the two local wars it had fought against them and many Afrikaner nationalists were against the idea of fighting on the Britain's side during both World Wars.
As an aside, my maternal great-grandfather fought in the Boer war against Britain and against the Germans in East Africa during WWI. He lived to see WWII as well although he was an old man then.
The coins were changed again in 1965 to depict animals and plants (no more bundles of sticks) and in 1970 the head of Jan Van Riebeeck was replaced with either the South African coat of arms or the current head of state.
5-cent pieces depicting President Nico Diedrichs and the Blue Crane, our national bird.
| Half Cent | Copper, 1970 |
|---|---|
 |  |
A favourite from my childhood: half a cent, which was withdrawn sometime around 1980. I remember that you could buy a box of matches or a square of chewing gum with one.
All of these coins are old but have survived for years in the soil. All I did was buff them with a soft scourer to remove the dirt. Nowadays, the coins we use just rust within a year.
Then these 2 also turned up in the soil:
| Heads is Copper | Tails is silver |
|---|---|
 |  |
Considered an unusual coin because of the mix of metals, an American dime from 1966, apparently the head depicts Roosevelt.
A real surprise: a Soviet 3 Kopeck coin from 1961. How it ended up on a hillside in Johannesburg is anybody's guess because the area where I found it was public land so it could have been lost there by anyone, not just an inhabitant of my place. Relations between apartheid South Africa and the Soviets were distinctly frosty due to cold war maneuvering in Africa; South Africa was very much the proxy of the USA in the region and the USSR supported the African liberation movements. Travel to the USSR was definitely NOT a thing here until the mid 1990s unless you were a member of the ANC and I doubt there was much coin collecting going on but who knows?
| CCCP, USSR in English | 3 Kopeck, silver, 1961 |
|---|---|
 |  |
This is a great post! The changes over the years is very interesting. Love that half cent, it's beautiful. How fun it must have been to find all of these.
The archaeology of my back yard has been fun, I have found so many interesting objects, including prehistoric stone tools
Ah! What a great find, and I remember using the tickey and the half cent in my young days. Those days one would never have thought that they and the half cent would disappear from the financial system. I love how you laid out the history of the coins in the post.
Thank you! What saddens me most is that our current coinage doesn't even survive in the soil
exactly so. this also applies to both letters and tickets... all this ephemera has ceased to be material. It has disappeared from our life and will not be available to future archaeologists. From time to time, thinking about this makes me produce a sad sigh. 🙃
So true!
Nowadays almost everything has become flimsy milady. Maybe soon they will be making plastic coins.
!PIZZA and !LUV
No more coins, just tokens. Or transactions on a blockchain...
Oh yes, I forget that we are entering a digital future.
!PIZZA
How could you!?!?
!PIZZA
Blame it on age :)
!PIZZA
Greetings from Canada.
I wish I was half as lucky as you unearthing these numismatic treasures working in my garden. I've metal detector scanned my entire garden and I have only found evidence suggesting that in centuries past the local natives here used; Aluminum lawn chairs, rusty pliers, old rusty nails, stubby beer bottles and bottle caps. Yet, no cash. I say, they are remarkably advanced and civilized well before we became a part of the Commonwealth.
Kidding aside, I am a coin collector having my father's collection handed down to me as we spent a lot of special time together. I do have a few pieces like a large 1930 copper penny and 1952 5 Shillings both featuring the Dutch ship Dromadarus. And of course I love these silver Rands.
Indeed, South Africa has had a considerable history as portrayed on her coinage over the years as the vital and strategic gateway to the exotic East Indies.
Thank you @nikv for sharing these buried treasures.
And thanks for the tag @ibarra95
!HUG
!LADY
#silvergoldstackers
Thank you! I must say that the proportion of coins to rusty nails, bottle tops, old concrete and broken glass is quite small in my experience. All I can say is that we are messy and have a cavalier approach to our coins. We do have a very tumultuous history thanks to location and mineral resources.
Your coins are in much cleaner condition!
View or trade
LOHtokens.@kerrislravenhill, you successfully shared 0.1000 LOH with @nikv and you earned 0.1000 LOH as tips. (1/50 calls)
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You're welcome @kerrisIravenhill 🤗, you know I always appreciate your work with coins and such interesting stories to learn from.
Yes, it's a privilege of @nikv to find these ancient treasures. Your coins are very beautiful too, my friend!!
Greetings to you both and have an excellent Sunday!! 😊🙏🏻🫶
That's quite an interesting assortment of sifted coins you have there.
I have a small handful of coins, mostly silver, but old coins are fascinating to me even if they aren't valuable. It's fun to come across something now and then that is over a hundred years old. If only they came with a written history so you could see where all they have been.
Yes! I spent the most time wondering how on earth the Soviet coin got there
😍👍
@qwerrie does the last coin look familiar?
Ha! yes, of course. In my life I used some of these, but they are dated. CCCP means 'USSR', there is no such a country on the map since 1991.
Oh btw - 3 copecks isnt silver. It is not even a decent copper. It's just some kind of copper-zinc alloy.
ps. all of the finds in your soil are extremely cool, but these two I liked most:
the older - the better!
Yes I could see that the kopeck was sort of coppery. At least it isn't a shitty piece of iron with some electroplating, like our new coins. I like the oldest too!
😍
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Very cool finds and interesting history! I've only found an old Canadian coin on my farm in New England.
Thank you! I was surprised by the sheer number of coins in the soil
Hi @nikv, I see you also like to collect various kinds of interesting coins. You know! My brother @ibarrag is a huge fan of collecting; he has some around the house. I'll ask him later if he'll lend them to me to make a post about them and present them to the community. There are some from various Latin American countries and some very old ones from Cuba.
A few months ago I also published about and visited the numismatic museum on the island, and its history of banknotes and coins is very interesting, my friend.
Very nice post, @nikv, and very old South African coins. I think my friend @kerrislravenhill will also really like your post.
Greetings Nikv and have a lovely weekend!! 😊🤗🙏🏻🤩
Thank you! Enjoy your weekend too! I'll be interested to see your brother's collection
$PIZZA slices delivered:
nikv tipped papilloncharity (x2)
@papilloncharity(1/15) tipped @nikv (x4)
Come get MOONed!
WOW! What a fascinating find. Thank you for sharing. I have never seen most of these coins before other that the Roosevelt dime. Now that I am getting to feeling better, I would like to get out and start metal detecting to look for coinage. Hard part is finding ground to hunt on here.
Why is that? A concreted urban environment?
Somewaht, but more so that lots of private property.
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Nice coin find and history lesson. Your close-up pictures are real sharp. I have been metal detecting and finding a few coins. Found a Dominican peso. thought I had a dollar. Exchange rate is 2 cents to American dollar. Metal of coin probably worth more. By the way thank you for supporting my posts with @curangel
Thanks! And you are welcome. Surprisingly, I found a bunch more today.
I took the pictures with my cellphone and the camera is actually quite shitty but good natural light is the key to photographing coins. Also, don't macro them, just get good focus and crop after