World Coins And The Franklin Mint?

The Franklin Mint effectively did not make circulation coinage; all their "products" were aimed at collectors. That being said, their PNG coins up to 1 kina are identical in design to the ones struck elsewhere for circulation. Coins with face value 5 kina and above are purely Franklim Mint products.

Is your coin a "legitimate" PNG coin? Yes, in the sense that the government of PNG authorized its issue and hopefully received some profit from its sale. No, in the sense that few if any such coins were ever actually physically located in PNG, having been shipped directly from the Franklin Mint to an overseas collector, and I doubt if any bank or store in the country would have accepted it in change. It's known as "NCLT" - Non-Circulating Legal Tender. Whether you consider NCLT to be "legitimate" coinage is entirely up to you.

I should also point out that it's now been several decades since the Franklin Mint single-handedly killed the world coin market with its overproduction of cheap proof coins in shoddy packaging, and the stigma of the Franklin Mint is finally starting to wear off. Provided the coins have not been damaged by the abominable packaging, they should be worth more than bullion value nowadays.


Being struck at a private mint does not necessarily mean that the coins are not an official legal tender issue of that country. All of the Pacific island countries (even New Zealand) are way too small to have their own mint, so they have to outsource their coins, both circulation and NCLT, from somewhere. They'll typically go for the lowest bidder, which in the 1970s was the Franklin Mint. These days the Royal Canadian Mint wins most of the contracts from these countries for circulation coins, while Perth Mint and others typically do the NCLT.

When it comes to the "legitimacy" of NCLT, I personally tend to focus on the meaningfulness of the object or event depicted on the coin to the country that "issued" the coin. In that sense, Franklin Mint coins are usually pretty good, compared to the "products" from modern mass-producers like Pobjoy and Perth. A Western Samoan coin that commemorates Captain Cook has clear and unambiguous local significance; a Tuvaluan coin that commemorates the new Transformers movie does not. The first coin was probably commissioned by the Samoan government itself and probably would have been sold in Samoa as well as elsewhere. The second coin was dreamed up by Perth Mint's marketing department for whom Tuvalu is merely a flag of convenience.

Angels and minsters of light preserve us ......

"If your coin is no longer in a blister-pack wrapper, then it's probably been ruined. If it is, then have a look at the coin and see if it's damaged or not. Either way, I wouldn't trust the Franklin Mint packaging to last longer or work better than other, more coin-friendly means of storage."

Well, after much consideration I finally removed the coin from the Franklin Mint packaging and put it in a 2.5 x 2.5 coin holder inside a plastic sheet in a folder. It sure looks nice next to the other large coins.
I picked up another one that is in the pseudo-velvet and am going to remove it.

chasinva69, the coin I was talking about was almost falling out of the package. The package was damaged and worn. I just picked it up by itself and paid less than spot for it. I think the seller couldn't sell it and just low balled it to move inventory. In my area that happens a lot with some of the more "obscure" nations. Yesterday I found a larger commemortive coin from one of the island nations (Fiji maybe?) that was listed for $60. I thought that was low and took a pic of it and check it out. It has almost $80 in silver in it. People just are not interested in world coins in my area, and judging from what I have been reading on these forums I suspect that most areas are similar.