The Gary Oddie Collection of English Regal Shillings

Gary Oddie

“It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

It is with particular pleasure, tinged with not a little sadness, that Noonans Mayfair have been chosen to auction the extremely important collection of shillings formed over 46 years by Dr Gary Oddie. Although English silver shillings were his prime collecting passion, his interest in the denomination soon spread across the sea to Ireland, to overseas territories, to silver and other local tokens, even to paper money and postal orders – anywhere that the shilling had been a recognised form of monetary exchange.

Gary was born in Clitheroe, Lancashire, on 23 January 1965, the eldest child of John Thomas Oddie and his wife, Patricia. He was joined a year later by his brother Ian, and three years later by his sister Dawn. Educated at St James primary school and Clitheroe Royal Grammar School, he then studied physics at the University of York from 1983 to 1986. A spell of teacher training at Keele University in 1986 presaged the completion of his DPhil studies at Cranfield University, Bedfordshire, in...