The year was 1066 and a pivotal battle between two European powers that would help shape the history of the continent, and for that matter the world, was about to take place near a coastal village in England. To commemorate this conflict, the Perth Mint is now offering The Battle of Hastings 1066 1oz Silver Proof Coin as the third coin in its successful Famous Battle coin series.

Harold II, King of England, had just returned from crushing a Norwegian Viking invasion when he heard news of a Norman force near the village of Hastings. Eager to show his people of his ability to protect them under all circumstances, he rushed with what men he could find to meet the threat. Advisors had pleaded with King Harold to delay in order to give his battle weary soldiers a rest and to muster additional troops. Harold refused and marched at once with a force estimated at 7,500.

This division includes both modifi cations that have value to collectors – and those that don’t. I needed a couple of divisions to cover other things that happen to coins to aid in cataloging them. This avoids the false conclusion that an unlisted coin is quite rare, when the exact opposite is more likely to be the case.

Collectible modifi cations after strike (V-A)

This section includes those classes having to do with deliberate modifi cations of the coin done with a specifi c purpose or intent which makes them of some value to collectors. Quite often these pieces were made specifi cally to sell to collectors, or at least to the public under the guise of being collectible.

One of the largest hoards of Roman coins ever discovered in Britain has been officially declared 'treasure' today.

Amateur metal detecting enthusiast Keith Bennett discovered a total of 1,141 Roman denarii, or silver coins, in a field last July.

The coins, stashed in a clay urn and buried around four feet underground, date from between 206 BC and 195 BC.

The find was officially declared treasure today at an inquest in Leamington Spa.

Warwickshire coroner Sean McGovern said: 'In this case it is a significant find of Roman coins which are indeed treasure.

'The coins will be valued by the British Museum and they will be worth a reasonably significant sum.'

Mr Bennett, 42, who works at the central library in Leamington Spa, found the hoard in farmer Peter Turner's field in Stratford-upon-Avon on July 13 last year.

World Coin News, and just about every other numismatic publication, feasts on reporting the highest prices fetched at auctions, the fabulous increases of coin values, the frenzy to buy this or that coin for investment. Thus, coin collecting becomes associated with coin investing, eventually to the point that gaining a profit subsumes the joy of collecting, and the coin purchaser no longer cares a whit about the coin per se. In this series of occasional articles, my intention is to persuade collectors that accumulating coin as a hobby can still be fun.

In these articles I will be addressing three levels of collecting based on relative affordability: Level A for those who can spend about $100 per month, Level B for $200 per month, and Level C for $500 per month. Periodically, I'll make a comment for what might be Level AA at $50 per month or less, and Level D at $1,000 per month.

But first, a few caveats. Coin collecting at these levels will only be an enjoyment if the collector rejects the concept of investment. Rather, he or she should regard it as recreation - an "investment" in fun, like a holiday in Cancun, tickets at the stadium to watch the San Francisco Giants lose another ball game, a weekend at Disneyland, a Harley-Davidson and so forth. Affordable collecting is a hobby, for which resale for profit should be irrelevant.

Sale of the Adams-Carter 1804 silver dollar on May 1 for $2.3 million to John Albanese, as well as the sale at the Central States Numismatic Society by Heritage of a 1794 silver dollar in AU-55 for $345,000 and an MS-61 at $503,125 afford a good opportunity to take a look at the rare coin market in a unique perspective.

Add a 1794 silver dollar that was sold by Heritage as F-12 at the Florida United Numismatists sale in January, and you have a rare opportunity to examine how a true collector coin stands up to the Salomon Brothers index in extended attenuated form.

< For more than 30 years, the gold standard of viewing the coin market in perspective has been the Salomon Brothers survey of tangible assets, begun in 1978 and officially continued into the 1990s when the Federal Trade Commission forced the venerable white shoe investment firm to discontinue its monitoring.

Among the assets compared in the charting of yesteryear were stocks, bonds, foreign exchange, farmland, old master paintings, Chinese porcelain, gold, diamonds, postage stamps, and other tangible items of value. Each June, R.S. Solomon wrote an annual accounting and charted it.

To some, the 19th century may be another line in the history books, but the latter half of the century must have qualified as undoubtedly heady times as they unfolded. The year 1849 saw the discovery of gold in the young American West. By 1860 the "united" in the United States of America had unraveled to the point where the nation went into a four-year war with itself.

In the aftermath of that bloodiest of American conflicts, silver was found in numerous places in the western territories, as well as gold. The fever for precious metals hit people all over the country. It seemed a person could make it rich just by finding the right spot to dig in the sands of the Western deserts.

The government even recognized that with all that newly mine metal came the need for mint facilities in the West, first opening a branch mint in San Francisco, then a branch in Carson City, Nev. The legacy of the latter of these facilities today seems too often to be just a string of silver dollars, Trade dollars, and gold coins, all carrying high price tags because of the CC mintmark. But there is quite a bit more when one does a bit of modern-day digging. It's up to us collectors to look for that.

When silver was discovered in what is now called the Comstock Lode, in 1859, the Lode wasn't even in Nevada technically. A large portion of what became Nevada was the western part of the Utah Territory in 1859, and wouldn't become a part of Nevada for another two years.

Silver coins are a very popular with coin collecting enthusiasts.

There are many different types of silver coins one can collect and which coins you chose will depend on your personal tastes as well as the reasons for collecting. It is a good idea to study the various silver coins available and their specifications before you buy.

Popular silver coins include:

The American Silver Eagle

The Australian Silver Kookaburra

Australian Silver Kangaroos

Australian Chinese Lunar Calendar Series

British Silver Britannia's

Canadian Silver Maple Leaves

Chinese Silver Pandas

Delcam, one of Europe's largest CADCAM software development houses, currently provides Mints worldwide with ArtCAM, an intuitive suite of design and manufacturing software for artisans. ArtCAM Pro, Delcam's top-end artistic CADCAM software solution has allowed engravers to meet the tight deadlines of hundreds of projects each year by reducing the time taken to a quarter of that required by traditional production techniques.

ArtCAM allows the designer to import 3D models, scanned drawings and photographs, scanned plaster of Paris moulds or files from other CAD packages. Alternatively they can design directly within the software. The engraver can then create or manipulate the artwork to make complex and intricate 3D reliefs for the obverse and reverse designs of their coins.

When working on foreign commissioned projects ArtCAM can simply take in import images of different scripts such as Arabic, Chinese or Japanese, thereby reducing the possibility of written inaccuracies and simplifying the overall project.