Post A Crown!

1960 Soith Africa 5 Shillings

I really wasn't expecting this thread to do so well. Here are my four large silver Mexican coins with four different denominations.


8 reales, 1839 Zs (Zacatecas)
The quintessential cap-and-rays. One of those timeless classics.

1 peso, 1908 Mo
The same cap-and-rays, but now denominated decimally as "1 peso". (Of course, we've already seen this pair earlier in the thread.) After 70 years the design is less crude but also perhaps less charming.

5 pesos, 1953 Mo
What does this coin have in common with the Washington quarter? Both of them commemorate the 200th birthday of that nation's principal founding father. Of course, Hidalgo's coin is much nicer.

100 pesos, 1977 Mo
Throughout the 1900s, Mexico struck large silver coins, all of roughly the same size. But the denomination was periodically adjusted as the peso lost value, from $1 to $5 to $10 to $25 to $100. This is the last of those issues (although a $100,000 coin was planned in the early 90s).

large: check. Both are bigger than a Morgan dollar; the Hungarian @41mm; the Hu-peh @40mm.
heavy: check. 28.14 gm. and 26.74 gm. respectively.
gray metal: check. Both are 0.900 silver.
And both were melt tub finds.

1990 HUNGARY 500 FORINT:



1909-11 CHINA 'DRAGON DOLLAR':



The Chinese coin would be a good item for the 'post an odd denomination' thread.

By sheer coincidence, I got my first coin from Ascension Island just three days ago!


Ascension Island, 25 pence, 1981

I have a bit of a dislike for the endless waves of Princess Diana coins released by all kinds of countries that had nothing to do with Diana, but this one is unusually pretty. See, heraldic emblems are always classy.


Spain, 100 pesetas, 1966

And on the topic of heraldic emblems, here's one of my favourite large modern silver coins. All the traditional symbols of Spain and its regions are there, but combined in a modern way. (There are also some less traditional symbols, like Franco's Falangist bundle of arrows.) It's like a "remix" of some of the lovely 8R coins we've been seeing in this thread.

As today is the Persian New Year, Nowruz, here is my silver (billon) crown sized coin of the Ottoman Empire, a 2 Zolota from the 3rd year of the reign of Mustafa III, approximately 1760. The Ottoman Empire and Persia were great rivals but early influences of Persian culture existed and remain today in many of Iran's neighbors, where Nowruz is also observed.

2013 British Arctic Territories 2 Pound coin

Louis XVIII 1821 5 francs

1873 Belgium 5 Francs position A