Our extended family have always been inveterate coin collectors (and stamps but that’s another story). Oh not collectors in the sense of joining clubs, and shopping for rarities online, and having every Australian threepence, or a 1930 Australian penny; but collectors in the sense of putting in a jar unusual coins picked up here there and everywhere and keeping them for the next 100 years in the sure and certain knowledge that one day they would be worth a lot of money to the great grandchildren.

So I have been going through the accumulated results of all this, and have old coins spread all over the table, trying to see what they are, and what, if anything they are worth. Short answer – nothing. I keep finding bits on the internet saying things like well, everyone collected 50 cent commemorative coins and there were millions made, so worthless. We have a lot of 50c commemorative coins. Same for every jar, every box, every bag I opened. You want to know the least valuable old coins from Australia, Britain, America, France, Greece, New Zealand, Japan, Palestine, I’ve got ‘em on a list.

Hang on “Palestine” 1935, that’s interesting. Wonder how … Oh yes, of course. Have a photo of my father in Tel Aviv in the war. And then I start to think about the coins not in terms of monetary value but in terms of family history. And bit by bit the pattern emerged. An overseas holiday here, a job in New Zealand there, a trip to visit relatives in England, men at war (Middle East, New Guinea), migrations to Australia, men at war (Gallipoli, France), migrations to Australia. Here a soldier on leave empties the coins from his pocket; there a family puts coins from the old country, no longer of use, in a jar in a new country; and over here fathers, mothers, grandmothers, after holidays, show young children the interesting foreign coins they have in purse and wallet.

So elements of a family history, but even more than that. Many of the coins are worn, very worn. It’s one of the reasons they lack value, the coin collectors preferring “uncirculated” coins. But the wear makes them seem more valuable to me. There are British pennies so worn smooth that they are almost unreadable, dating back to mid-nineteenth century and handled by thousands, tens of thousands of people; rubbed in wallets and purses and trouser pockets and shop tills. Not so much six degrees of separation, as I hold an 1851 penny in my hand, a young Queen Victoria on one side, but a connection with all of the people who have handled it before me.

Worthless?