What Countries Have The Most Interesting Silver Coins?

Old or new? What price range? Crowns or smaller? There are lots of attractive silver coins out there. Could you be more specific?

Personally I started with US. Then I got into the foreign silver coins that circulated in the US before 1857 which had legal tender status. They are a subset of US collecting in my opinion since they are what the average Joe used for money before 1857. From there I went on to counterfeits of those same coins.

But I would collect whatever interests you. You are the only one who can decide that.

Modern coins are best for a limited budget. Older silver usually comes at a premium.

I also caution buying ANYTHING from China or from someone in the US with a Chinese sounding name. The number of forgeries is staggering.

Before buying it may be best to ask the Forum or one of the specialists who writes here.

If you ever decide to look into Spanish American let me know - I can help.

For me, it would be coins from the South African Republic (Dutch: Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, or ZAR).

i like france, mexico, and bahamas.

I really want one of these Nicaraguan coins:

I am an ancient collector. Coins that have significant historical connection are always interesting.

I have a tetradrachm of Athens with the features well known to collectors of ancient Greek coins.

It has an owl on the reverse, which was the city symbol or badge, if you like of the city, and the head of Athena, the goddess of the City on the obverse. struck about 430 BC. The first strikings of these coins, in about 480 BC, commemorated the two battles which saved the Greeks from invasion by the Persians. The silver for these coins was mined in place known as Larium, to the west of the city. The presence of these mines help to explain the prosperity of the City.

The two battles are famous; the Battle of Marathon, where the Olympic long distance running event gets it's name from, and the Battle of Salamis. This was a sea battle. These two battles resulted in the victorious Greeks being able to kick the Persians out of their homelands.

http://www.coincommunity.com/numism...id%253D10544

this link has helped me out more than he will ever know

I may get pounced upon here for saying this, but I admit to finding many of the recent silver coins (particularly NCLT) somewhat boring! Designs destined for circulation seem to have a LOT more thought and work put into them, and of course the 'standardisation' that comes with a long running series, just looks awesome in a collection! Which of course leads me to state the opposite for much of the NCLT out there - not much thought, because really, its destined only for collectors, who half the time buy the stuff purely to keep their collection series 'complete'!

For me, the really nice silver coins are the Kaiserreich era stuff and the earlier Australian Pre-Decimal stuff (despite my intensive research of Third Reich coinage, I can't say those designs quite compete with the Kaiserreich designs - all the REALLY nice designs never made it past Proben/Pattern stage) - both series feature a fairly simple designs (although this 'simple' designs are rendered with a lot of detail and beauty) but leave you in no doubt as to the origin of the coins. Plus, as above, the standardisation of design looks GREAT in an album.