 Hi, I'm Matt from allaboutcoins.co.uk and Coin Collector magazine. This video we speak to Rebecca Morgan. She's the head of collector services at the Royal Mint. We asked Rebecca about her career and her role at the Mint in Wales and also a little bit about the issuing policy of the Royal Mint and the collecting services, what they provide. So the analysis and valuation of coins that the experts can provide to collectors. So thanks to Rebecca for her time and just before we go into that interview I wanted to mention a brand new publication. As you can see it's called Collect Modern Coins. This is a souvenir guide to all the 50p, £2 and 10p coins, those commemorative coins that have been put into circulation. So inside we've got checklists, we've got mintages, we've got valuations of every single commemorative coin that's been issued over the past well 50 years really. There's also in-depth expert advice from the experts at Change Checker who helps us with the publication. There's space for you to write notes. There's lots and lots of different checklists. So it really is a fantastic publication and it's available now. There's one of the checklists there. If you can see that on the camera, the 50p checklist there. So it's available right now over on the website at allaboutcoins.co.uk. You can also get it digitally if you want to. All the information is on the website so do have a look. In the meantime here's our chat with Rebecca Morgan. Okay so first of all I wonder if you could kind of tell us how you got involved at the Royal Mint and a bit about your background? So this is always quite a funny story. I would tell anybody that is looking to progress their career or to decide what they want to do when they're older. It's never a linear path as it was with me. So I actually started off life in marketing. I got a degree in business and a master's in marketing and I went on to become a marketing manager which I really enjoyed and then I had my first child and decided I wanted to work part-time for a bit of which it was quite difficult in marketing. So then I accidentally became a secretary of the board of a golf club because I thought I was just becoming a secretary but turns out I was actually running the club which I was quite surprised about. So I became a second board of a golf club and I'm actually a treasurer of the golf club and ran that for four years and really enjoyed that as well. Then I did some work with the Welsh Assembly Government supporting some local community centres and then the job at the Royal Mint came out but actually it wasn't in Historic because that wasn't a business then. It was in HR and as the editorial comes an engagement manager which is something I'm really passionate about. So I managed to get the job in that department, absolutely loved it. Then Henry II's daughter and Anne who is now our CEO and at the time was in charge of HR. So she asked me if I would consider starting a business within the Royal Mint, a new business, a new business stream and would I lead the project? So after much discussions I decided I'd give her a go and that was when Collector Services was on. For what question we asked ourselves a few years ago about how else we could better serve collectors and the business started four years ago and now here I am as the director of that business. Excellent. So as head of Collector Services how would you kind of describe a typical day? What kind what does your role kind of involve? So as the director across we're part of a consumer business there's precious metals and commemorative as well so I work in a team with both of those directors but my team, my Collector Services team, a typical day involves speaking to collectors pretty much all day and finding out how we can give them a collection with a purpose, how we can enhance their collections. So sometimes that's as simple as a coin, I say simple, as a coin finder service where they're looking for a particular coin my team will go out and find that coin or it might be helping them create their collection into a bit more of an organised way so they can fill gaps in that collection and sometimes it's talking about the authentication and valuation of their coins and having them make decisions on selling them or enhancing that collection to a larger one or even moving into a new direction. Excellent. Okay so when people think of the role meant they tend to think of more modern coins and obviously we'll discuss those but there's also more historic coins as well that you deal with is that right? Yeah so we're actually 1100 years old as a brand we're I think the oldest organisation in the UK and I think some second oldest in the world we're very established I think you can say. We actually struck these historic coins originally so you know over 1000 years ago these coins were struck by the Royal Mint so that is how we came up with the idea that we should be involved in this market because we who better to help you understand and curate your collection than the people who originally struck the coins. So we deal obviously my team deal constantly in the historic area so Tudor coins, hammered coins, Oonan the lion, a Gothic crown and then all the all the coins in between from circulating right up to more modern commemoratives as well as well that are no longer available on the primary market and yeah so we've been doing that for four years it's we've always done it in a little bit with our customers have asked us to do it but we've had it as a business for the last four years and that's really gone from strength to strength and you'd be surprised how many people were collecting historic coins way before we decided to start getting involved. Yeah yeah excellent okay so how do you think the kind of the attitude or yeah the attitude to collecting circulation coins how do you think that's changed more recently? I'm not sure it has changed really I mean every collector we ever talked to new Arnold says that they started from collecting the coins and they changed and we know I must have heard it a hundred times where people have said they just noticed something and they had oh that's a different design or quite often wow that's my birth date on a coin and that sparked an interest in the reverses of coins and usually then obviously collecting from your change is really accessible because there's something that you already have and that usually sparks an interest but that's not true for everybody for some people it's a theme or an era sparks an interest something you'd never find in your change so people are interested in history and certain monarchs or certain periods of time or military even spanning the coins across the wars so there's lots of different ways people get into collecting coins though we do know that starting your change is by far the most popular. Yeah excellent that's really encouraging to know that people you know can see something in their change today and then it can lead to them it's kind of exploring the hobby even more that's really really good to know. Absolutely and you know coins have got a shelf life of a life cycle of around 30 to 40 years so even if there are less coins going into circulation now they still have an abundance of designs out there that people can get really interested in so yeah fantastic. Okay so one of the questions I had moving on to more modern coins was how does the rule mint balance the need to put coins out for practical reasons into circulation and how do you kind of balance that with coming up with commemorative designs? So again like I said people collect for different reasons and commemorative coins have been around a lot longer I think than people realise and obviously a lot of historic coins are actually circulating coins that we used as many back in the day but they also had commemorative coins even as far back as Victoria as Queen Victoria so there's always been a balance of commemorative versus circulating even when circulating was the only payment method even when cash was the only payment method you could use. I think you know circulating demand comes from the public so the Treasury will determine how many coins need to go into circulation of any one denomination depending on demands as you can imagine that peaks and drops around things like Christmas and when people are spending a lot more but there's an importance you know there's an importance for mass as well to make sure our collectors always have something to collect and quite a lot of people start collecting around themes that are not necessarily circulating coins like I've already mentioned so around monarchs or around I mean obviously some more popular culture things like music legends people are really interested in collecting coins for a myriad of reasons so the balance between commemorative and circulating has always been there and I think that it's great when they can be both but it's really important that we continue those collections to allow our collectors to continue doing what they love and continue their collection on the theme that they that they enjoy. Yeah okay and that kind of leads me on to another question about you know some people some collectors would say that Roman produced too many uncirculated coins on themes so how would you kind of address that? I think it's a difficult balance that we've talked about before because collectors want to collect and if those coins aren't or the designs aren't going into circulation it's important we give them a route in order to be able to continue their collections so if we if we only went by demand of circulating coin then there'd be very limited amount of of things that we could produce and that would mean they'd be a very limited amount of things people could collect and nothing makes a collector more unhappy than not being able to collect and I tell you that so so yeah a dedication to obviously continuing themes that people like to collect means that again we tried to keep an eye on that balance but so far it's worked out quite well. Yeah perfect okay and also the the 10 Ps that were released a couple of years ago really kind of sparked people's imagination and I think you know you'd be very lucky to find one of them now because collectors have found them all which is it's great do you think the Royal Mint have any plans to do anything similar in the future? I mean you know those kind of things are fantastic like you've said it's the same as Q Gardens you know Q Gardens you if you find one of those in your change now it's to be very lucky person that the 210 000 that went into circulation I suspect 209 000 are assisting in people's collections yeah and you know anytime that there's just the same with the diversity build Britain coin and the EU leaving coin the Brexit coin they are also you know really rearing your change so again that's really that's great for collectors they love that because they will dedicate their time to be trying to be one of the lucky ones that finds it so any opportunity would be get to do that but like I said cash is demanded from the you know the public and the Treasury and our job is to make sure we've got that cash ready so any opportunity would you rate? Yeah are you do you think you and your colleagues are sometimes surprised at the the reaction to coins so like the Brexit coin I know quite a it was quite a large mintage but but it's hard to find one now is that kind of surprising or do you do you kind of predict those things? Well it's hard to predict them I would say I think they're a much easier job if I could predict them but I would say that you know coins have always marked moments in history so when you think of significant moments in history it's hardly surprising that those kinds have disappeared from circulation because people love to use coins to mark mark moments in time and you know it's the same with historic coins where people start collecting those it's all about the times that those coins were used whose hands they could have passed through what history they saw and even now with modern coins people like to mark the occasion with a coin because it's a it's a tangible reminder of a moment in history. Yeah yeah absolutely okay so coming back to collectors and obviously you say you're dealing with collectors on a day-to-day basis what kind of queries do you get from the public and you know have there been any interesting ones? You wouldn't be surprised to find out we get a lot of the same queries we get lots of questions about mintages we get lots of questions like the ones you've asked me today about you know cash and design going into circulation and we get lots and lots of queries about the history of coins especially in my department so you know we're specialists my team are specialists more so than I in understanding history and Neurismatic history and we've also got luckily the Royal Mint Museum who you know archives dating back to 860 AD on the coins that we've struck and quite often we'll get queries about this unusual coin or you know when was this struck or you can you tell me a little bit more about this and then obviously we've got an authentication evaluation service so we got quite a lot through there where people are checking that the coin is genuine and because they may have their doubts for some reason or finding out you know I've just found this coin in my grandmother's drawer can you tell me a little bit about it and you know it turns out to be a £30,000 value of a coin that they would just about to probably throw into the into the into the bin so yes never never a dull day but yes really interesting questions from all of our collectors and they they challenge us a lot sometimes as well which is great yeah I can imagine so if if someone wants to authenticate a coin what's the kind of process they would would go through do they have to send the coin do you put a full authentication yes so we've got two levels of authentication a standard and advanced and for both of those you need to send them in for evaluation that can be done online so you can go to our website and you can send a picture of the coin and we can say assuming the coin is genuine it's this coin and it's between x it's worth between x and x depending on its quality so we can give you a ballpark figure of valuation if you actually want the coin authenticated it is quite a robust process so we use the latest technology an x or f machine that checks the composition of the metal we can pay that composition of metal with the original archives from the Royal Mint Museum to check that is the exact composition of metal that should be in a genuine coin and then there's all sorts of other tests water density tests mill counts we do a great deal of you know non-erasive investigation into the coin compare it to our original archives and then we will tell you if we are satisfied this coin is a genuine coin and if you go for the advanced authentication then we will also find some history on sort of the dyes that we use or anything interesting about that coin in particular so most people who've got quite high value coins will go for the more advanced authentication because sometimes there'll be slight marks on the coin that can give an indication of what diet was used or what batch number it came out of and a little bit more information about it so so yeah really popular service for us yeah yeah excellent and is that limited to just British coins? British post decimal, pre decimal coins yes because obviously that's what we're specialists in we're the voice of authority in British coinage I always say we don't just know them we struck them so we can't I don't think you can know more than us when it comes to British coinage and yeah so that's what the authentication evaluation is limited to is is British struck coins but obviously if they buy their historic coins directly from us they're already pre-authenticated by the Royal Mint and guaranteed to be genuine but this is usually for people who bought coins before we started doing this or have bought them elsewhere and would like to check that they are genuine yeah of course okay fantastic so do you have any tips for for collectors collecting modern coins and also perhaps you know those those people that have got older coins somewhere you know up in their attic or or somewhere at home you've got any tips you want to give to people yeah I've got loads of tips I could give to people but the main one I say that my team strive for is to have people will collect you know a great people collect for love will collect I like the look of this one I like the design of this I like the color of this one and quite often they'll have a mishmash of coins which is great your collection should bring you joy and if that brings you joy that is fantastic and but quite often my team will work to say actually did you realize you've got sort of three of this and four of this and if you bought these three in the center then you'd have a run of monarchs you know one from every monarch or did you realize you've got four of the end with the seven sovereigns and if you collect these five you'll have the full set and so it's quite nice to give a collection of purpose so if it's military coins or if it's a certain year date a certain monarch a certain era it's nice to be able to say these are my collection of whatever coins but really my top tip is to love love what you're collecting if you love the mishmash of coins you carry up and collecting just what draws your eye but when you're looking to build something for the future maybe then a collection with a purpose is what we say is to do and that can take any form it can be silver it can be gold it can be sovereigns it can be six pieces it really doesn't matter and then for modern coins and again same sort of thing try and try to get a theme going again if it's something you love it's a passive denomination like 50 p's with that is sovereigns and then just look after your coins is my is my top tip if you've got them bashing around in a drawer somewhere and you decide to start collecting get yourself a little album they're quite cost effective they're about 10 pounds at least you can slip them in there don't clean your coins please unless they're being professionally cleaned by professionally I mean hardly touched not by somebody who's offering professional cleaning and yeah just just look after them and try to learn about as much about them as you can because like I said they're small pieces of history so there's lots of information out there we've got I forgot there's how much on our website but there's also you know plenty of other sources out there to to learn about your coins and hopefully it'll keep you interested in them brilliant okay and just finally do you collect any of the coins yourself are you even allowed to I guess it's a question and do you have a favourite design from the past yes so it's really hard not to collect when you work at the Royal Mint because you see miniature pieces of art being being made every single day and the process that goes into making a coin is absolutely you know astounding you know the artistry and the craftsmanship so it's really difficult to not be in love with them when you see the worker goes into them and so I didn't collect before I worked there I do collect now but I'm very careful not to take any out of the door that's why someone will be arrested I buy them over the website but I like to buy the sort of three decimal coinage and talk to my to my dad about the stories you know the coins what you could buy for you know a shilling which almost amazes me these days you'd have changed my pound after going to the cinema and I'm buying fish and chips which always makes me laugh and so I like I love anything to do with my dad's sort of era and then more modern I collect some of the sovereigns particularly ones with sort of I collect the Victorian Albert sovereign because they had a special cipher on it and I collect generally from my change with my children so we have all the albums because that's a fun way to do it and then my favourite coin is a very cliche because it's almost everyone's favourite coin who's ever worked in history but Oona and the lion is my favourite coin because it's just because of the story behind the design and apart from the fact it's a beautiful coin and now becoming iconic in its own right but the story behind it I think is is really romantic as well so I think I'm again coins are great tellers of stories so when you've got a great story behind the coin that is what draws me to it but the design is fantastic too so a double wow meet with you and the lion yeah absolutely excellent okay well Rebecca thanks so much for your time today thanks for thanks for having me all that knowledge and experience and yeah thank you very much