This original shilling is from 1819, the year in which Queen Victoria was born. Queen Victoria’s father, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, was the fourth son of George III and she inherited the throne because her three uncles – George VI, Frederick Duke of York and William IV – had no legitimate children who survived.

Shillings were commonly used coins in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. In a time when £1 equalled 20 shillings and 1 shilling equalled 12 pence, the sixpence was effectively a half-shilling coin.

With a single shilling, you could buy dinner in a steakhouse, including beef, bread and beer plus a tip, or a pound of perfumed soap, pay the postage for a one-page letter from London to New York, or buy a pound of Parmesan cheese.