My brother and I are both into English and American history, so this year instead of getting him yet another history book, I decided to give him a tiny bit of English history itself. I was able to purchase a silver penny that was minted sometime between 1250 - 1272 during Henry III’s reign. Now of course, I’ve got this laser cutter thingy so I decided to see what kind of display case I could make for it (that’s my “silver” tray in the background, by the way – not much silver left):
The coin is seated in an engrave between two pieces of PG acrylic. The back piece of acrylic is glued to PG Thick Cherry Plywood. I glued 4 magnets onto both the front and back pieces of acrylic so that the front piece could be removed to take out the coin.
I went back and forth on whether this is something he’d hang on a wall and finally decided against that. Instead I made a stand for it:
I’m pretty happy with it overall. I actually bought another old coin (this one from Henry VI’s reign) for myself and I’ll make a display case and stand for that one as well.
Very nicely done. I like the magnets to allow the coin to be removed.
I know nothing about such old coinage, so forgive my question if it seems naive.
Is the obverse side also stamped? If so, perhaps cutting a hole in the wood under/behind the coin would allow one to see the other side without removal?
Thanks. Yes, both sides are stamped. I hadn’t thought about cutting a window into the back piece of wood. It wouldn’t work, though, because I engraved a recess on that piece of acrylic so that the coin was flush with the surface. The engrave would basically hide the coin when looking from the back.
Amazing! It looks so professional. If I had a unique coin like that, this is exactly how I’d want to display it. This would work for stamps, campaign buttons, or any other thin collectible as well.
Thanks! I’ll post the design over in #free-laser-designs after Christmas. I need to tweak the design of the stand a bit and won’t have time to do that until later in the week.
I like this very much! In fact, I also have a Henry lll coin like this. I used to buy odd lots of metal detector finds from the UK on Ebay and have quite a cool collection. I am truly fascinated too, by British and American history. Thanks for the great idea!
Could you post the svg file for us to upload? Please? We are going to use it for low vision students at our school if that is ok? With some modifications of course. Awesome design!
This is a gentle reminder that it is against forum rules to request files.
You are in luck, however, as this file was posted in the Free Laser Design section of the forum. The name (so you can search) is Plaque and stand design.
I don’t really have an solid answer for that but I do know that that kind of coin is fairly common. I have one, too. Years ago, I bought several ‘lots’ of metal detector finds on ebay that were from the UK. After the dectectorists would go through their finds and report anything of value to the Portable Antiquities Scheme as required by law…and after keeping whatever they wished from the rest, they would sell everything remaining on ebay. I had great fun being a pseudo archaeologist here at home with my bag full of dirt-covered artifacts. My silver coin wasn’t part of those…I purchased it separately. I do have some pretty cool stuff in my own collections now, though.
