If there’s one area where the UK can be said to lead the world it’s the production of tawdry royal souvenirs. Many of them, well, the ones relating to royal marriages anyway, have outlasted the subject of their commemoration many times over.
Here are some souvenirs of short-lived royal marriages. If there was any justice you’d be able to send them to Buckingham Palace for a refund.
There is, I seem to recall, something called the Royal Effigies Act, but it seems to have been replaced by the Trade Marks Act 1994. When you look at the royal effigies in these picture you have to wonder if making them look like monkeys is a way of getting round the legislation.
I feel a bit more positive about the birthday and Jubilee medallions, and about the portraits used, though a day of entering them on eBay can wear the shine off anything.
They will be loaded on eBay this week, so I’m hoping that we will get rid of some of them in the next week or two – I need the room on my desk!
Check out the rest of the shop here.
Ugh! Those terrible medallions! Poor you, having to deal with them all day!
Ah well, tomorrow is another day. 🙂
🙂
Not having been in the market for royal medallions, I hadn’t realised how appalling they are. Are they all that bad or did you just chooses the worst examples?
I didn’t deliberately choose the worst ones as such, but they are all by makers of cheap medallions and one of the places they save money is by not paying a lot for talented designers.
Not good for the resale value though.
I noticed that…
I understand medals awarded for gallantry, but medallions for profit I don’t subscribe too!
The world of numismatics is a strange and murky one…
Do we have this sort of thing in the U.S.? If so, I am unaware of them. I can see how after a day of entering them on eBay, they would lose their shine.
There are presidential medallions on eBay – I’ve never really studied the American market. In 1776 you gained liberty and the right to run your own country but you forfeited the rights to drink tea and buy tawdry souvenir medals. Who’s sorry now? 🙂
Well, I do drink tea, so perhaps not all is lost. 😉
That’s probably because of your French heritage. It makes you very sophisticated. 🙂
Impressive website. Good to see you maintaining momentum
Thank you. 🙂
I have got a Coronation, Sliver Jubilee and 90th Birthday. And a Churchill Crown!
I invested in four Churchill crowns in around 1967, getting them for five shillings each from the bank. This was investment advice in a coin book. They are now worth 25 pence each. Or five shillings, in old money.
I’ve never had much luck with my investments.
That is the problem with ebay. People used to throw stuff away and now they try to sell it. The more people selling the same things brings the value down. I have got some original NatWest pigs, they used to be valuable but now they are not!
Yes, the dreaded decline in value has hit a lot of things. Ah well…