What’s with all the Eurocents?
This post’s for Anne-Marie and Julia, two friends who between them have transported a large bag of Eurocent coins from Ghent in Belgium, to Istanbul in Turkey and now back to Stirling in Scotland where I will pick them up next week.
Thanks to both of you for getting them for me. You wanted to know what I use them for.
Bases for white metal model soldiers, toys really, which I use to play miniature wargames and which look like this once I’ve painted and based them. Some people never grow up and I’m one of them 🙂
When I buy the things they look like the this.
They only have small bases which are not big enough to make them stable standing up on the games table. So I need to put them on bases. There’s lots of ways of doing this, some people use cardboard, some people use laser cut mdf, which they get from specialist suppliers, some people use washers.
I use coins when I want circular bases , different sized coins for different sized models.
Why coins? Because they’re circular, which I think looks good, and they’re usually cheaper than washers. Nowadays many coins are made of plated steel (Eurocents are) which is very useful as they will then stick to magnetic sheet which can be stuck on bottom of the boxes I use to carry my models about the place. The steel sticking to the magnetic sheet keeps them stable and stops them rattling around in the box and getting damaged by banging into each other.
There they are, models, some of them based on Eurocents, in a box with a magnetic base.
For most sizes of models I can use British 1p or 2p coins which are much easier for me to get than Eurocents, but British coins are too big for some popular model sizes. The models in these pictures are what is known as 15mm scale (yes I know 15mm isn’t really a scale and they’re closer to 18mm or 20mm tall) and Eurocents work well as bases for them. I have literally thousands of models in that scale, as do many of my friends, and that’s why I’m always wanting to get my hands on Eurocents.
Thanks again.
Interesting. Did not know that the eurocent was steel cored. The US penny used to be copper. Now it is just non-magnetic junk metal.
UK 1p and 2p coins (except pre-1992 and some 2p coins produced in 1998) are also plated steel.
I’ve seen newspaper reports that 5p and 10p coins produced since January this year are plated steel –
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2090854/Steel-smaller-new-5p-10p-save-Treasury-8million-year.html>
But the Royal Mint does not say anything about this in their coin specifications on the web.
http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/coin-design-and-specifications/five-pence-coin
http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/coin-design-and-specifications/ten-pence-coin
That’s ilegal in my country, termed as “destruction of public property” in the law. Having said that, I have a fortune already in €5c coins hidden below my minis, not the mattress
I will now be able to explain my baker why I asked to keep them… Let me know how many armies you’ll put on their feet. I crossed fingers I wouldn’t have to pay for my over-weighted luggage…