Month: May 2026

Royal souvenirs can be grand, fragile or gloriously tiny. This Lesney Coronation Coach manages all three.

Produced for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the little die-cast procession captures one of the great ceremonial sights of 1953: the Gold State Coach, drawn through London with the new monarch inside. The real coach was already an antique by then, built in 1762 and used at every coronation since William IV in 1831. Lesney’s version turns that pageantry into a tabletop parade, with white horses, red-coated riders and a gilt coach that still has plenty of presence.

It is also a neat stepping stone in British toy history. Lesney, founded by Leslie and Rodney Smith after the war, would soon become famous for Matchbox toys. The coronation coach helped prove there was a hungry market for small die-cast models with big stories attached.

The original price of five shillings was not throwaway pocket money either. Fittingly, 1953 also saw the Royal Mint issue a five-shilling Coronation Crown, giving the sum its own royal echo.

Today, the appeal is easy to understand. It is part souvenir, part toy, part miniature stage set. And unlike a programme or postcard, it does not simply record the coronation. It recreates the procession, frozen forever at full ceremonial trot.

Today, a pound is something we barely notice leaving our pocket. In 1813, it carried rather more weight – especially when it came as a handwritten promise from a local bank.

These Lincoln Bank one pound notes are reminders of a time when money was not always the standardised, state-backed object we know today. A banknote was exactly what the name suggests: a note from a bank. It promised that the bearer could receive the stated value on demand, and its worth relied on confidence in the people and institution behind it.

That personal element is all over these examples. The notes were hand cut, hand dated and individually numbered, with details added for the bank’s own ledger. They were also signed by John Steel, one of the four cashiers named on the face of the note, alongside Abraham Sheath, Challis Sheath and John Wray.

Their worn condition is part of the appeal. These were not made to survive as historic objects. They were working pieces of paper, passed from hand to hand, signed on the reverse by holders, then stamped or marked when finally redeemed. In most cases, redemption meant destruction.

More than two hundred years later, these fragile survivals still do what good collectables always do: they make a distant world feel surprisingly close.

Before every phone had a calculator and every till did the sums for you, changing money systems was a properly hands-on business. Decimal Day arrived on Monday 15 February 1971, when the United Kingdom and Ireland moved from pounds, shillings and pence to the decimal system. In theory, it was tidier. In practice, it left a lot of people peering at price charts, checking conversion tables and doing the sort of mental arithmetic that could make a small purchase feel like a maths exam.

This Kingston Four-Rule Pocket Calculator is a lovely relic from that moment of everyday confusion. Proudly marked “Empire Made, Redg. in G. Britain” and “Made in Hong Kong”, it is a non-battery calculator that looks both ingenious and baffling to modern eyes. One side handles addition and subtraction in £.s.d, while the reverse has slide-rule scales for multiplication and division.

Its purpose was simple enough: help people work out old money against new. Each new penny was worth 2.4 old pence, which meant some conversions landed awkwardly. An old price of £7 10s 6d became £7.52½p, hardly the sort of thing most people could do quickly at the counter.

At a time when electronic pocket calculators could cost hundreds of pounds, this modest little machine offered a cheaper answer. Today, it is wonderfully outdated – and all the more charming for it.