A couple of days ago, a much-anticipated package came from Andrew Tucker in England. Andrew had been given permission to take home from work some items dubbed superfluous. They included two of these odd "sovereign balances."

What in the world is a "sovereign balance" you may ask. I may answer...

I will. Back in the days when gold coins were in actual circulation, there were considerable problems with forgeries. A gold sovereign traded even with five U.S. dollars in the mid-19th. century, and it represented something like a week's wages -- potent incentive to make counterfeits with base metal. The solution to the problem was this handy little gizmo.

It's a simple device, about four inches long, and is made in two pieces – a base with a fulcrum, and an upper beam with a weight at one end and two pans at the other. They were simple to use, too. Place a sovereign in the larger pan, or a half-sovereign in the smaller one, and if the beam balanced, the coin was good. If it was either too light or too heavy, the beam would not balance. As an additional security feature, the slot in the pan would not pass any coin that was too wide or too thick. A coin that was too small would go through with a visible gap.

Any number of manufacturers made these scales. While more or less identical from maker to maker, they displayed endless minor variations. Finding information about sovereign balances on Google was a little easier than I expected, but, as you might expect, there are not actually a whole lot of websites devoted to the subject. I only found two of any use, in fact.

From those sources, I gathered that the maker of the two balances in my possession was a Simmons company, in Birmingham England. There seem to have been three Simmonses -- T (Thomas), I (John), and C (Charles). They must have been all one company, so I don't understand the distinction. Brothers in a family business most likely -- but why mark the product so? Although a few sovereign balances continued to be made for specialty use well into this century, the Simmons company apparently produced them mostly between 1835 and 1852.

One of the sites I referenced was an auction house, and had starting bids on similar balances of 40 to 50 Pounds. The expected selling price was as high as 80 ( about$135). On an unrelated blog, I found a remark that until recently such balances could be had for only a few Pounds, and had only lately become fashionable with collectors.

On an interesting note, I have an 1866 gold half-sovereign (perhaps I should post a picture of that as well). I placed it in the smaller, outer pan, and sure enough it balanced perfectly. I also have a $5 US gold piece, called an "Half Eagle." (A full Eagle is a $10 gold piece.) As it exchanged exactly with the British sovereign, it should have balanced as well. I placed it in the larger, inner pan, and it sank like a rock. It was too heavy!

Well, of course the Half Eagle wasn't a fake. It happens that the gold in the US coin was less pure by a small percentage. To make up the same value, the Half Eagle was a few grams heavier in base metal alloy.

What do I do with *two* nearly identical sovereign balances? As it happens, I have my eye on a coin held by my favourite dealer. It is a bit too pricey for my taste, but I have interested Robert in buying the spare balance from me. With that discounted from the sales price of the coin, I may be able to add it to my collection after all.

The coin that I crave is a small bronze thing called a quinarius. (I don't know why. It has no relation to the actual silver quinarius of three centuries earlier.) It was minted by an usurper named Allectus in Britain, and shows a nice image of a Roman warship on the reverse.

Earlier, a Roman general, who commanded the Channel fleet had seized control of Britain and the northern Gallic coast. Carausius ruled as bogus emperor for several years, even commemorating himself with coins that showed him alongside the legitimate emperors of East and West. But he was fooling himself. Maximianus was only bidding his time while preoccupied with more important matters to the south.

But there was never a showdown. One of Carausius's lieutenants, Allectus, murdered him first! So it was this Allectus on whom the wrath of the legitimate emperor finally fell. The general who was dispatched to the north in 296 AD to polish off the presumptuous usurper, was Constantius Chlorus. The newly minted Caesar would become Augustus as well, and the father of Constantine the Great.

Just moments ago, I got e-mail from my dealer. He's agreed in principle to leveraging the sale of the Allectus with the purchase of one of my balances.

Woo hooo!