talkmagic.co.uk

A stall on Birmingham Rag market sales them at, if I remember right, 4 for £1. And I still have no idea why they're so popular in magic!

Incidentally, if anyone has old English Pennies then check them carefully to see if the letters KN appear on them. If so it denotes that it was minted here in Birmingham at the Kings Norton Mint rather than at the Royal Mint and is worth rather more than other pennies.

No, the coins i have are no pennies. They are shiny silver coins. There is no value printed on them, but if i remember correctly the shopkeeper said they were 25 pence pieces.

Ok, searched on Google for 25 pence and found a picture of the coin:
http://acneskinclinic.com/ebay0806/06082100.jpg

The picture is a bit dark, but the coin actually looks very nice, better than the dollar coins. I compared this coin to the dollars i have and they are not only a bit thicker, but also a tiny bit bigger than the dollar coins. A stack of 3 English coins are as big as a stack of 4 dollars.

The edges of the dollar coins are rougher than the 25 pence coins, so the dollars are a bit better for palming.

Anyway, for a trick that needs nice big coins i would recommend the 25 pence coins. Since they were not that expensive i think there are a lot more of them around, so they should be easy to find in coin collector shops.

That's a very unusual coin. It's actually what we called a Crown and was never used in everyday cash transactions as they were mainly for commemorating events such as the Royal Silver Jubilee in 1977 - see http://24carat.co.uk/1977coinsets.html. In Decimal coinage terms Crowns were worth 25 pence but these days they're valued much higher and sold for £5.

That is the coin have. Only mine (i bought 4 of them) don't have the dark background that make the design stand out. My coins are all silver, so maybe my coins are cheaper versions.

When i was at the coin shop he had about 9 of these coins, so i thought they were nothing really special, just a pretty coin to do magic with

They could be worth money to a collector if they're in good condition - not much but it might be worth checking a few coin collectoir's sites. The posh word for a coin collector is Numismatist which might be a good key word to use .