I read recently in one of your postings that some girls from a very exclusive private school in Darbyshire were alleged to have pocketed some gold coins during an excursion to the Rotal mint in 1979 and were consequently seen to by Miss for their trouble.

This is sheer nonsense. I attended an excursion to the Royal mint around this time and souvenier commerative coins were given to all the visitors. These were not made of gold but a copper nickel alloy and consequently were very shiny and might have been mistaken for gold. I was later informed that each coin was worth about 1p.

I think that the real story probably was that these girls were misbehaving during the excursion and were seen to on their return to school. However just to big note themselves they may have made up this rather elaborate charade.
I can assure all and sundry that the security at the Royal mint is at least good enough not to be breached by some sassy brats from Darbyshire.

Its funny you should mention that as there was a Gold coin incident at ourpublic school.
Some parents had contributed ancient roman gold coins for a open day historical display.
needless to say this was arranged by fourth formers who simply placed the coins on tables with bits of card.visitors were sparse and security was nil.(the room was unattanded at times)You guessed it at the end of the day the coins were gone!
The school also had valuable medals and awards on permenent display in the library in glass cases though militaria collectors were tmepted they never went missing!

I find it very hard to believe thany anybody in their right mind would allow genuine gold coins to be displayed at a school under those conditions.

Those gold coins would have been as genuine as some of the postings on this forum.

Well its true.
You gotta remember that the price of gold in the 1970s was about
$100 an oz.
Very low.
The boys were left to their own devices

A ton was worth something in the 70s. Gold is still a bad idea as it attracts non refundable VAT. In other words as soon as you buy it you are 17.5% worse off.

Volatile stuff, gold. In 1980 one of my colleagues, enthused by the meteoric rise of gold, tried very hard to get me to invest with him at the then price of $850 per ounce. I often think of the poor chap - he'll have had to wait until this year to get his money back!

Bozo, irrespective of the price of gold, those coins presumably had a value due to their antiquity. Did you ever get to hear what the cost of the theft was assessed at?

Whatever one thinks of antiquity one would be surprised to find how cheap the real thing is.
For instance Roman coins which to anyone with any romance in their reason de etre are beyond price are really quite cheap.
T'is in the eye of the beholder!

As I clearly pointed out in my original posting these alleged coins were almost certainly not gold but some sort of copper alloy which looks very similar to gold.

In ancient times the so called alchemists used to ty and dupe some unsuspecting simpletons by passing this alloy off as real gold. Of course if you were caught trying this then it would not be worth your while to buy any green bananas.

The coins in question were very small-smaller than a current 5p piece so it was no big deal.
No I dont know with 100%accuracy that they were pure unadulterated gold but they were definetly genuine ancient
coins.
Incidentally reading readers letters in August Metal Detecting magazine-a chap states that he found a Gold Coin
in a field and promtly dutiously submitted it to a woman
at his local British Museum/Local Archaelogy finds office
who apprently sent it to London.Thta was the last he heard of it and that was 9 months ago-he states.He is an OAP and has only recently taken up htis hobby instead of sitting in front of the TV.
I am surpsied at the interest this thread is attracting-seems theres more to Gold coins than first thought

"Wow! I’ve found another ring-pull."

Rejected by ‘Metal Detecting’ magazine as ‘inappropriate’, my picture taken on the beach at Hove, nevertheless captures all the glamour and excitement of this fascinating pastime.

I researched that story about the alleged theft of gold coins from the mint around 1979. It turns out that it was just a mistake in the inventory at the time which happened to coincide with an excursion from some girls school.

Naturally the tabloids seized on it and try to beat up some sort of a story. It was all a lot of hype. As far as I know no girls from that particular school could have been involved since all the gold coins in question were securely dislayed in glass cabinets.

Hello Asquith.

Your research skills leave a lot to be desired. The incident was reported in the mainstream media as well as the tabloids. The missing coins, gold or not, were never recovered and no satisfactory explanation was ever given.

Although I do agree with your assertion that the school excursion had nothing to do with the incident. I suggest you improve your researching skills before posting any more information on this forum.

I stand by my researching skills. I challenge anybody out there to provide any credible evidence that there was a breach of security at the Royal Mint around that time or in fact in recent times.

Please, aren't we getting a little off topic here? In any case can we at least maintain a certain semblance of decorum?

Nicked in time!

Please show a little respect.

The following is taken from a UK news article in 1979:

"that there was a breach of security at the Royal Mint around that time or in ..."

However I agree there is no mention of any school excursion.

I stand corrected.

Apology accepted.

I do not recall any apology. But I must admit I am impressed by your research skills.

Well thank you. I used to work as a research assistant at BMW.

However I am not completely satisfied with the outcome. I am starting to suspect that the entire story was a hoax. Never the less thank you for your patience.

Pherhaps some of the other forum members can come up with something.

You seem like a very nice woman.

Bye for now

Lets not get hysterical.

Order Please!

Although this posting does not have anything to do with gold coins, the original posting reminds me of a school excursion that I went on to a petting farm near Bedale in North Yorkshire.

I remember that some of the girls were misbehaving, I cannot recall exactly what they were doing, but the teacher in charge (female) gave them all a really good smacking in front of all the other girls. Fortunately there were no other visitors there at the time apart from our school.

I know these day this would not be allowed and the younger readers of the forum probably do not believe me, but in the early 1980s this was not uncommon and would be forgotten 5 minutes after it happened.

After we got back to school the girls involved and the teacher were getting on alright and everything went back to normal. A lot of the postings I have read on this forum make too big a deal of cp and were obviously written by people who were too young to have either experienced it or witnessed it. It was just a normal part of school life at the time.

Hi Bessy

Very interesting posting. Yes I once went on a school excursion to a petting farm, but unfortunately I do not remember the location.

It was some time ago but I do remember that they had a tiger cub there, and according to our teacher it was one of the few in the UK at the time.

We would never risk playing up on an excursion because the senior mistress usually came along as back up. But in any case we were not really interested in misbehaving at excursions because then the school would have probably stopped them.

My posting is also off topic since there are no gold coins involved, but I feel I had to respond to your posting because it had a lot of warmth and feeling to it. I had a great time at my school despite the cp which was only moderate. I think kids back then appreciated those kind of outings much more than kids do today.

Hi Nikki

You are lucky. There were no tiger cubs at the petting farm I mentioned, just farm animals. I would have really liked to pet a tiger cub.

Your school sounded really good. Mine was ok. There was not really that much cp, but of course if you got out of line you could be seen to, but so what?

Even though most of the female teachers were rather strict, at least they were quite friendly and you could share a joke with them as long as you did not cross the line. I got on well with most of them.

Bye for now

If it helps I can make it possible for you to run your fingers over the cowling of a Piper Cub or a Tiger Moth?

As my many colleagues who visit this forum will confirm there are many problems in having tiger cubs in petting farms, not least of them being that tiger cubs inexorably become tigers. The point of transition is sometimes difficult to gauge. However, an infallible indicator is if the animal eats one of the kids, something that, sadly, doesn't seem to have happened here!

It is obvious from some of the recent postings that many of you are wasting your rapier sharp wits frequenting these forums when you should be playing the comedy circuits in the major cities.

Seconded!
What's tigers and zoos got to do with this thread?
Keep on subject please.

Hello Bessy

I am sorry that you did not get to see any tiger cubs on that particular excursion. I hope my posting did not upset you in any way. I did not realise that you had such affection for these beautiful animals.

Never mind, I am not sure if you still live in the UK, but there must be petting farms around that do have tiger cubs. I am pretty sure you will find one.

Best of luck

Hi Nikki

Do not worry. I am not upset. Yes I do think tigers are beautiful animals and I would like to find a petting farm in the UK, where I still live that has one. To be honest I have never pursued the matter, but your posting ignited a spark in me that I thought was gone.

Best wishes

Bessy

I agree with you that tigers are beautiful creatures,as are all animals in fact. And this is a subject very close to my heart. In fact if I had to bring the cane back for one reason it would be for those who mistreat animals. And in fact there was an item in the news very recently(I forgot which country it was) where some boys were caned by order of court for mistreating animals. I think it was somewhere in Asia.
But this is a different subject from this topic. You could make another new topic on this subject so we don't get mixed up. I'm sure there will be many people interested in it,including me I assure you.

Party Whip said:

"You could make another new topic on this subject so we don't get mixed up."

Oh no they could'nt! Sorry, I'll re-phrase that, oh no they shouldn't! The title of this forum happens to be:

School Corporal Punishment

not "Cuddly Tiger Cubs"!

No one likes tigers more than me. Left to myself I'd keep a couple for quick disposal of TV licence inspectors and similar riff-raff who occasionally find their way to the door.  However, anyone wanting a protracted dialogue on tigers, cubs or otherwise, should look elsewhere. I'd recommend these two Network54 forums (the names below are clickable links). They could certainly both use the traffic! Be warned though that the "Council of Tigers" forum is not only a little 'strange' shall we say, but the colour scheme borders on the dreadful!

1. Council of Tigers
   
   
2. Animal Lover Forum