Nalaberong's Weekly Coin Buys

That $20 coin is awesome , I love it is it the Mexican coin that has silver in it ?

Apparently the local automotive association offers a currency exchange! So a routine trip suddenly became exciting. Since Canadians are in a constant state of going to Mexico, I asked to pick out a 2013 (not even a year old, apparently) Mexican $50 note (smallest they stock, $20 still eludes me) and while it's not in perfect condition it has a beautiful butterfly (and I only paid maybe 40 cents over face). Great-looking polymer, but now I want more!

As always with high-quality banknote scans, images have been defaced by me.

Lucky you, today I ran out and spent $5. I'm saving up for a thorough dig through the trough (I just realized that this is awful if you're not a native English speaker) of world coins at the distant coin store, plus (hopefully, if they still have it) my first Afghani coin.

Anyway...

I was snooping around our provincial Legislature (suck it, Calgary) and a vending machine by the scale LEGO model of the building spat out some 2014 quarters! Excellent - my first non-commemorative 2014 find.

At the store - very shiny Ghana half-penny.

I got to look through a pile of new additions at the store before anyone else! These will probably be traded off.

Eastern Bloc coins. Large Bulgarian denominations are harder to find.

Holed Greek coins.

Machine-struck Chinese cash coin. Over 1 billion were made. Either someone's stealthily hammered this one with a hammer or it suffers from a planchet flaw - who knows? It's cracked in more than one place.

Turkish telephone tokens. In Italy these are gettones, in France they're jetons, and in Turkey they're jetonu.

Large Turkish 2.5 lira coin. The pile of unsorted coins was mostly from Cyprus, Greece, and Turkey. While this sounds like a nice, cheaper Mediterranean vacation, Greece and Turkey have poor relations and the island of Cyprus is ethnically split between a Greek half and a separatist Turkish half. Some of my friends were interrogated in either country when entering from the other - my father asked to take a ferry to Turkey in Greece when he was there decades ago, and halfway across he realized that he was being smuggled across by a private boat... luckily, Turkish authorities never caught him. Stick to one or the other!

More Turkish coins. They are quite pretty and the stainless-steel ones have intricate edge lettering. Sadly they would soon be made totally obsolete by inflation.

A Mexican mix as well. Mexican coins are everywhere in Canada because we love going to warm places.

The rest of the mix. I like the Italian 1 lira - a small aluminum coin that you don't see much, probably because it was worth almost nothing.

Now for the 3 banknotes I got! These scans are huge and undefaced.


Why so many worn-out Russian banknotes in Canada? I have been seeing a lot lately. This note is huge - (I tested) it can comfortably cover up a standard U.S. proof set. The Russian Revolution caused a huge number of revaluations, private issues, competing denominations, impromptu currency (like the postage stamps that had words printed on the sticky side) and the quality of the notes got worse and worse - visceral evidence of a country tearing itself apart.

Chinese Republican note from 1949 - the last year the Republic controlled any of mainland China. In October, the People's Republic of China was declared and the Republic escaped to Taiwan. This thing's only printed on one side and it looks pretty shoddy - I haven't fully attributed it yet.


Signed Allied-occupation notes from 1945 have got to have some kind of significance to somebody, which is why I bought this one. John, I have your banknote. Please contact me to discuss its safe return.

OK! On the weekend I spent $33 at the faraway shop as expected. First the big purchases...

My first coin from Afghanistan! 1 afghani (10g, .900 silver), 1925, $10, graded at F on the 2x2. I think this is much closer to XF... all silver Afghani coins are quite rare. My suspicion is that it would not be too difficult to fetch above the catalog value on these coins. The design is quite crude.

There was a bin of South African silver. Most of them had yellow dried tape residue on them (yuck), which is why they were being sold at melt... but I found what I wanted, some problem-free coins. Most exciting is this shilling, because it has a wonderful, wonderful classic design. George Kruger-Gray strikes again... his work is still in circulation in Canada and Mauritius, among others.

Here you can see some of that dried yellow tape residue that afflicted most of the coins there.

Some old designs were maintained after the British left and the currency switched to a decimal system. These "Unity Makes Strength" coins are not usually completely struck, so the wig man's face looks a bit lumpy and deformed.

These little threepences were cheap so I got 3 as well. All of this South African silver cost something like $9.

On to the 20-cent trough. This is an orphaned toonie core - it's quite small, and it has a split edge like the 2 euro cent coin (part of the bimetallic locking mechanism). No, I did not find the ring.

A rare bimetallic token, used on New Jersey's Garden State Parkway, the busiest toll highway in the USA. Like so many other toll, transit and bridge tokens, it is obsolete and now useless - the era of the transit token is, sadly, drawing to a close.

Unknown token, likely from the Colombian Mint but I don't know if it was struck by visitors or packaged in mint sets.

A Polish token! Incredibly, I knew what this was because I had looked this series up a few days prior - part of the Polish Mint's "Local Ducat" program where they encourage Polish towns to get their own tokens made for local trade. Nałęczów is a little spa town of about 5,000 and the inscriptions here don't make too much sense to me. The novelist Bolesław Prus vacationed here - remember him from the 10 złotych coin I got from Romania last month?

Another new country, short-lived Zaire. The dictator (seen here) of the Democratic Republic of the Congo renamed the country "Zaire", and the currency followed suit. So my new countries today go from A to Z... but the name didn't stick and the D.R.C. is now one of the poorest and worst countries in the world.

A Dryer Coin, this used to be a Wheat cent. I can't entirely make out the date but it's from the 1950s.

Commemorative Croatian coin, for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Not even the USA made circulating commemorative coins for its own Olympics, but Croatia did. Maybe 1996 was a good time to show their pro-Americanism after a secession war with Yugoslavia (mostly consisting of Serbia at that point)? Croatia is now the newest member of the E.U. since July 1, 2013, and soon this will meet so many other coins in the demonetized dustbin of history. Croatian commemoratives are nice, but a bit inconsistent (only 2 lipe and 5 lipa joined 1 kuna in commemorating the Olympics... every denomination has one or two commemorative designs unique to itself).

Hong Kong commemorative, when Hong Kong returned to China from the U.K. in 1997. Because Hong Kong's economy greatly outperformed China's, it was allowed to retain much of its internal autonomy, including its own currency. Every coin got a commemorative design in 1997 but I have only previously seen them in a proof set - my gift to a friend from Hong Kong who was born in 1997.

Indian commemorative. Apparently Shivaji was a warlord who, along with being a competent ruler, promoted the use of native Indian languages in his realm, and so he became a nationalist symbol when India shook off foreign influence in 1947. However, English is still one of two official languages of India (which boasts more English speakers than the entire USA), as you can see on this coin.

The World Cup was hosted in Spain in 1982 and they took it very seriously. All the coins changed to reflect this event from 1980 to 1982. The large 50-peseta coins are not often seen so it's great to have this one - the still larger 100-peseta coins remain elusive.

Vatican coin! Mintages from the Vatican greatly exceed the tiny state's population of ~850. I assume that some Vatican coins were made to be put into circulation in the rest of Italy because of this, along with tiny (but not as tiny) San Marino. Mark your calendars - Pope John Paul II is due to be canonized as a saint on April 27, 2014...

From the breakaway country of Transnistria comes this aluminum coin. Despite not having international recognition by anyone, Transnistria has its own army, parliament, legal and judicial system, government and currency, separate from neighbouring Moldova which it left. Transnistria never wanted to leave the USSR, and it contains a high population of ethnic Russians. Although Crimea is huge in the news right now, Transnistria was there first, having its own little separatist struggle in 1992.

Venezuelan bimetallic, I think it's a nice modern coin. Venezuela's economy is currently turning down, but through good and bad and inflation and re-denomination this very same portrait of Simon Bolivar has graced Venezuela's coins since 1879! Bolivar makes George Washington look like a bit of an underachiever because he led independence wars in no less than 6 modern countries! But this was not his intention - although he tried to create one unified country, his efforts at making a united Latin American "Gran Colombia" fragmented after his death.

Sudanese coin - hard to find because nobody wants to go to Sudan.

Incredibly, I found some Russian 10-ruble coins! These are normally hard to find here, having only been introduced a few years ago. The design is quite nice and catches the light in a good way.

Even more incredibly - a Russian 10-ruble commemorative!! I have gotten many of these through mail-trades... but I never expected to find any for sale in Canada. But no, here it is - a 2013 Russian commemorative, probably brought straight to Canada after it was made for the Kazan Universiade (an event that us Edmontonians will always mention hosting in 1978 when Calgarians brag about hosting the Olympics in 1988). I already have one, but this is a fantastic 20-cent find!

Iranian coins, I'll buy as many as I can find. The 250-rial coin on the far right replaced a bimetallic of the same design less than 10 years ago. Now, it's worth only about 1 cent USD. These might become fairly rare to find over here - it depends. How many modern Cuban coins can be found in America?

Soviet commemorative - Canadians fondly remember 1967 as the year that all Canadian coins got a commemorative design, and it was the same story in the USSR - while Canadian Confederation turned 100 years old in 1967, the Russian Revolution was 50 in the same year. So, coincidentally, the two largest countries in the world at the time both got a whole line-up of commemorative coins for 1967! This one's 50-kopeks, but strangely it doesn't carry a numerical denomination or a date. This design was re-used on the 1-ruble coin (which had the date 1967 on the edge lettering).

Also from the former Eastern Bloc, some interesting coins. East German marks were supposed to be worth the same as a West German mark within the country, but outside the black market rates ranged from 5:1 to 10:1 and higher.

Today's bimetallics. My favourite is the Finnish 10-markkaa coin, although it is very worn for some reason (VG or even G).

More Israeli coins and others bought for their exchange rate. I have way too many shekels now.

Norwegian coins of the same denomination...

3 more Eritrean coins, for exchange...

And a miscellaneous mix!

$25 spent last week but only now have I bothered to take photos.


I passed over this a few times on previous visits. The 2x2 plastic was milky and made the coin look unappealing. But it turns out it is in a high AU grade! One of my many goals is to complete a type-set of all circulating Latvian coins - not as difficult as other countries, but very diverse and interesting. Independence from 1921 to 1940 produced many wonderful copper and silver coins, including the stunning 5-lati coin (which is at the very top of my "coins to pay double-digit money for" list). From 1991 onwards the lats was re-introduced and now in 2014 Latvia is the newest user of the Euro. Although much of Latvian history is quite sad, the coins are very lovely.

For some reason there were many underpriced gulden at the store. I only bought this one for $4, as priced on the 2x2 - significantly under today's melt value of $7.50. I can't complain! There were also some 1 gulden coins for $1.50 and $2. I'll probably go back for those because that's also below melt. This is quite a large coin, but not as large as the pre-war 2.5 gulden coins that preceded it.

A copper-nickel African crown, priced at $6 but it's in BU condition and probably worth more. This has a low mintage of only 100,000 and nowadays the Ugandan shilling is quite worthless. Strangely, this F.A.O. coin explicitly says "F.A.O. COIN PROGRAM" on it.

Also underpriced! I was very lucky! Uncirculated Iranian rial with the Shah's head on it. Previously, and traditionally, the monarch had only appeared sparingly on very high-value coins, but an increase in his despotic rule was reflected on the coinage of his country. By the 1970s his profile (often weakly struck) graced even the dime-sized rial. But the Persian lion on the other side was an equally valid symbol of his country. What to do? Simple - the numerical denomination was removed to make room for his head.

A new country for me, the Central Asian nation of Tajikistan. Not many people vacation in Central Asia (but they should! it's a very nice place) so these coins are understandably hard to find here.

Three old Dutch coins marked as $8 - maybe a bit overpriced but they will keep me in the How far back? thread for a bit longer and I'm always surprised to find a coin more than 200 years old for under $5! This one is a duit from Utrecht.

Another duit but this one is older and it's from Holland, the (historically) most significant province of the Netherlands. To this day some people call the entire country "Holland", and in some other languages that's the only name they've got for the place.

This is only half a duit, and it is not from any of the European Dutch provinces. It's made for the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. The VOC monogram (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, United East India Company) would grace coins for almost 200 years. In the heyday of the VOC, their trade with Asia totally surpassed that of the British or any other European power. Some of these things even made their way to the other side of the world in New Amsterdam, now New York.

With only one LED light I can only take bad pictures of assorted coins. Hopefully you get the idea.

British East Africa shilling. One of the nicest colonial coin designs in Africa - many British African coins are quite unimaginative (hole in the middle, words, one or two lines, done!) but this one is a longtime favourite of collectors. It appeared on coins of various denominations, in .800 silver, .500 silver, .250 silver and copper-nickel, but when the British left they must have taken the dies with them (or, most likely, the dies were in London the entire time and the newly-independent nations had bigger things to worry about than coin design).

Finally, a Hungarian coin, 20 forint. Because it's from 1989, it has some historical significance - the 1990 issues would drop the "NÉP" from "NÉPKÃ-ZTÃ�RSASÃ�G" with the end of the Hungarian People's Republic. ("NÉP" indicated "PEOPLE'S" - Hungarian, not actually related to any other European language, has a habit of attaching prefixes, suffixes and prepositions to nouns in a way that can change their meaning to a related concept, kind of like how we use "un-" as in "un-American"... but much more extensive)

I quite like the Soviet Lenin coin. I have one that I´m going to upload once I get back home.

Holy moly! Just looked through this thread for the first time. Great stuff. @nalaberong, where on earth do you keep what must be a massive collection if you add to it this often?

On the 2nd most recent post of yours, I like that Danish 1 Kroner with the hole in the center and hearts on it. I have an '04 one of those sitting on my keyboard that I found while traveling in Europe in 2012.

Today, $24, 5 coins... I didn't look through any of the mixed buckets today. It went OK, although buying only higher-value coins makes me feel weird.


Latvian bimetallic. This shares some design elements with the 1-lats coin, they make a nice set. I like the clouds on this one!

BU Liberian coin, low mintage (250,000).

Here's one I did badly on, $10 on the 2x2. It's been cleaned! Even though it's only nickel-brass!! So this will probably go in my pocket as a lesson: even base metal alloys can be cleaned (but why?). Still, interesting Estonian coin. The marka was directly descended from the German Empire's occupation mark during World War I: it lived on as the currency of Estonia until it was replaced by the higher-valued kroon.

Undergraded Russian silver. This one hasn't been cleaned - finally!! At least AU, 2x2 perplexingly said "F". Sure!

Finally, a Danish krone. The dolphin-and-wheat design is quite nice, and Krause gives Danish coins strangely huge values. But this one was about par for the course - low condition, low price. But it looks nice!