Many of these coins are mentioned in Robert Louis Stevenson's famous 1883 novel Treasure Island.
It was a strange collection, like Billy Bones's hoard for the diversity of coinage, but so much larger
and so much more varied that I think I never had more pleasure than in sorting them.
English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Georges, and Louises, doubloons and double guineas and
moidores and sequins, the pictures of all the kings of Europe for the last hundred years,
strange Oriental pieces stamped with what looked like wisps of string or bits of spider's web,
round pieces and square pieces, and pieces bored through the middle, as if to wear them
round your neck - nearly every variety of money in the world must, I think, have found a place
in that collection; and for number, I am sure they were like autumn leaves, so that my back ached
with stooping and my fingers with sorting them out.
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