Did Jack the Ripper own this bronze 1888 British UK Victoria Half Penny?!?!

Description: Did Jack the Ripper own this 1888 British UK Victoria Half Penny?!?! This is an authentic bronze British half-penny minted in 1888. Was it owned at one point by the infamous Saucy Jack? It's hard to say, but I've been trying to crunch the numbers. Perhaps you have heard that the next breath you take is likely to contain in it an air molecule that was exhaled by Julius Caesar as he exhaled his last breath after his murder? In 44 BCE Rome, Caesar was murdered by senators (et tu, Brute?!) and fell to the floor dying. In his last exhaled breath, there were approximately 25 sextillion air molecules. As the breath left Caesar, the air rose and started to spread into the atmosphere, eventually circulating around the entire planet within two years. As hard as it is to believe, the statistics suggest that your next breath is likely to have one of these 25,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 oxygen or nitrogen molecules in it. Sadly, the numbers are much harder to crunch for this half-penny and Jack the Ripper. It's hard to get a clear answer, even, on the population of London in 1888, though odds are that it was around 5 million. Records indicate that just over 5 million half-pennies were minted in the UK in the year 1888. We know that whoever Jack the Ripper was (I have a strong suspicion who he was, by the way!), he was in the Whitechapel area of London since that's where he commited the murders. Is is enough to say that the number of people in London was roughly equivalent to the number of 1888 half-pennies minted, and thus with the "one half-penny for everyone" idea, he likely touched a half-penny? Perhaps. But this sort of reasoning misses a lot. He surely touched many half-pennies that were minted in1888 throughout that year. Many. But did he touch this one? The truth is that we would need historical statistics to tell us on average how many times a day a Londoner in 1888 touched a new half-penny going about his or her normal business. We know that the half-penny was a popular coin at the time. (In fact, in 1889 the treasury minted 12.6 million of them, because the population--and the poor--were growing and the half-penny was so popular.) But we don't have numbers for how many half-pennies would be touched in a typical day. We know that sex workers at the time charged, typically, between one and five shillings (with one shilling equaling 24 half-pennies). But the fact of the matter is that there is even reason to believe now that not all of the women Jack the Ripper killed were involved in sex work. So even that avenue is likely a dead-end. If we assume the Jack the Ripper went about his business like any other London resident before going to the East End and committing these horrible murders, would it be safe to guess that like any other Londoner, he perhaps touched, let's say, 25 half-pennies a day? Over the course of 1888, this would add up to 9,125 half-pennies. That would mean that there would be a 0.2% chance that Jack the Ripper would have touched one specific half-penny--namely, this one up for auction. Those are not great odds, but they are also not zero! And truth be told, it's all just a huge guess, really, since so many of the variables are undetermined. Still, it's an interesting thing to ponder. In the end, you're almost definitely breathing in some of Caesar's last breath right now, but it's a toss-up as to whether or not you would be holding a half-penny owned by Jack the Ripper if you win this auction. But...perhaps! The odds don't rule it out!

Price: 29.99 USD

Location: Chicago, Illinois

End Time: 2024-12-10T19:38:39.000Z

Shipping Cost: 1.48 USD