This Is What Unsearched Lots Can Look Like...

The 5 at the upper left is Swiss, and I'm pretty sure that the big copper coin with the oval-shaped shield is Duchy of Warsaw, which isn't technically German States either (though I might well be mistaken in that case).

And that cent right under the big copper is Westphalia, right? Fascinating coin!

awesome pick-up!

Now that's an indication that Christmas was early this year and that Santa thinks you've been nice this year! Very nice lot!

If you're going to sell, then let me know, as I have a fond interest in getting my hands on one of those about 170 500 Mark coins.

Now for the two 'rare' Norwegian coins... The 1883 10 Øre is 'medium rare', as it had a mintage of 1.25 million. However, a lot of silver got lost during WWII, so we don't really know how many still are around. I got one in about the same quality or slightly better and I paid around 20 Euro for it, I guess.

Now ofr the 25 Øre... Can you tell me how much damage there is and from which year it is? Those coins usually go for quite good money around here, as all of them really are rare, with just 8 years of minting and all years on just about 400.000 to 600.000 pieces. Plus that a lot of them got lost over time.




We have a town in Norway called heck. It freezes over regularly. 'Hell' in Norwegian actually means 'successfully'. Healthy food means 'helse kost'. In Dutch this literally means 'food from hell'.

Thank you for all replies.

@thedollarman We luckily live in East Berlin and are not around that place very often, where this tragedy happened.

@UltraRant I will upload images of that 25 Ore piece later. For the 500 Mark coin just PM me.

The lot was not advertised as unsearched (which in my opinion is a condition for a lot to actually be unsearched). I also guess that the seller did not really know what she had there. Many of the more valuable banknotes were not visible on the images she provided so I only calculated the value on what I saw in the ad. My guess is that she inherited all the coins and banknotes and just wanted to get rid of them.

I also enjoy thinking about the possible history of this 'collection' (it may also be just called a hoard). The sellers location is a small town in the southeast Brandenburg, only about 50 kilometres away from Poland and the Czech Republic. The lot includes Notgeld and a token from other town of the region. So I guess that whoever left this lot to her, used to live in the region for quite some time. The lot also contains coins and banknotes from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bohemia & Moravia, which supports that hypothesis.

Now lets get to the foreign coins. There are WWII issues from Yugoslavia, Poland and the Netherlands and earlier denominations from the Soviet Union so maybe a family member was a soldier and brought these home with him. Then there are these coins from Belgium and Russia, minted in the early 20th century that may have been a souvenir for some soldier of WWI. Even the older coins from France could be related to the Franco-Prussian War in 1870/1871.

I know that it may be unlikely that this lot grew in that actual way but I think that it has been passed on for generations with everyone adding a couple of coins or banknotes that were just left over and it is very interesting trying to reconstruct the history of such a lot.

Here is something, that I found between all the banknotes. I guess it was ripped out of a book. The page shows the exchange rates of European currencies. Due to the fact that Austria-Hungary are still one unit on this page these exchange rates now must be at least around 100 years old.

Being an enthusiastic collector of world minors by date and mint, I am just drooling over that find. Congratulations!
Please add me to your list of potential customers if you decide to turn loose any of that. It does seem like there were wartime connections there. Similar but much smaller lots appear frequently in dealers' foreign 'junk' boxes in the USA, obviously having been brought back from overseas deployments.

Much fun

I am ing over that collection. Looks like a lot of fun to sort through!