Cannonball!

关于此套币: As if Southern Rhodesia (another dead country that is no longer on the map) wasn't crazy enough, I decided to go through my British Empire collection and see just how far down the rabbit hole I could get with a collection of British Honduras coins.
It's been a long, busy year grading coins, and I'm sure the graders at PCGS are glad I'm helping cover their salaries this year, bwah hah hah hah hah hah....

Now known as Belize, British Honduras made a random, eclectic mix of coins from 1885 through 1973.
Much like Southern Rhodesia, it is a dead country, no longer identified as such on the map. Its money has been demonetized, with the silver issues long gone. Many silver issues are either in scuzzy low grades, or cleaned or damaged (or both) when encountered. There are both low mintage and condition rarities in this set, and when you combine those factors for certain coins, it ain't for the faint of heart folks.

It is the hardest set of coins I've tried to assemble thus far; some coins simply ARE NOT OUT THERE IN ANY GRADE.
An example that comes to mind is the 1942 5 cent piece. Until I recently upgraded it to a VF35, my lowly, stained, scuzzy G04 was the sole graded example and was the top pop coin.

As an aside as to just how difficult this set is to assemble, consider this:
A complete third party graded set has not been assembled to the best of my knowledge.
There was a collector named Richard Stuart who assembled one of the greatest collections of Central American coins ever, of which he included coinage from British Honduras. He did not complete the set in third party graded holders to my knowledge, and there are coins presented here that he did not find representative examples of, or, in some cases, there are coins that I have surpassed the grade levels of which he acquired. There are also coins that I have crossed from NGC holders to PCGS holders from the Richard Stuart collection, and I have maintained the pedigree on the holders to preserve the provenance of these coins.

If you care to take a look, NGC has dedicated a section of their website to the Richard Stuart collection, it can be accessed here:

Text to link

There are 127 coins needed for the set; I've currently got 124 in PCGS holders, with 2 in N1 (details) holders. I have the three "empty" holes in NGC holders; they will be crossed at some point to complete the set. I was not successful on my first crossover attempt for these three coins, and I ran out of time for the 2019 grading season (but hey, I'm 97+% complete, further than anyone else who has attempted a graded set has ever gotten...). I've also got one of the two N1 coins in an NGC holder to be crossed.
Bottom line: watch this space.

Enjoy the images presented here, it is truly a labor of love and is a set I've enjoyed assembling immensely, and there are some truly scarce to rare coins imaged here.