Well, that's it - time's up.
And congratulations are in order, for we do indeed have a winner! It was a very close run thing - there were 5 contestants with scores of 17 or over, and the lead changed several times over the week. But we do have a leader, who by the slenderest of margins missed out on a perfect score.
And that winner is...
RenaLwith a final score of 19½ out of 20.
Here then are the answers, with some hints on what might have helped to assist you finding them...
Coin 1:
Sudan 5 millim 1973, FAO coin. Knowing Arabic would have helped; maybe having an older Krause would have helped - I think this eagle was dropped from newer issues of Krause's "Instant Identifier". Otherwise, it would have been a matter of trawling through the Arabic coins, looking for this particular eagle.
Coin 2:
British Virgin Islands 10 cents 1973. This 'un would've stumped me. I'd have had to trawl through all the countries that issued "cents" in Krause, and there are a lot of those.
Coin 3:
New Guinea 1 penny 1936 - that's Edward the Eighth's monogram, ERI. We just recently had a thread about Edward VIII coins.
Papua New Guinea or Great Britain = ½ pointCoin 4:
Monaco 1 franc 1968 - the coat of arms and denomination "1 Fr" should have helped.
Coin 5:
Biafra 2½ shillings 1969 - Biafra was a piece of Nigeria which briefly seceded in the late 1960's. The clues here are: the motto is in English, the
manilla ring (part of the national symbol) is a form of primitive money from West Africa. Look for former British colonies in West Africa which made coins - there aren't too many. A Google search on the motto would probably work, too.
Coin 6:
Kazakstan 5 tyin 1993 - The clue here is the denomination... it's in Cyrillic ("Russian alphabet"), and starts with T. That narrows your search.
Coin 7: RenaL joked in his first e-mail that this was the hardest coin in the quiz... and he was more right than he knew, for this was the one he didn't quite get right. Don't feel too bad, Renal, hardly anyone got this one correct... because despite what the coin itself says, it wasn't issued for Denmark!
Faeroe Islands 2 ore 1941. During WWII, after Germany occupied Denmark, Britain occupied these outlying Danish islands and struck "Danish-style" coins for use there. Krause has a footnote in the Denmark section, telling you this.
Denmark = ½ pointCoin 8:
Kiau Chou 5 cents 1905 - Kiau Chou (various spellings) was the "German equivalent of Hong Kong", a small enclave in China pre-WWI. Now the city of Tsingtao. Posting the other side of the coin would've been much less challenging! The clue here was "No Chinese Provincials" - that narrowed down the possible options considerably.
Germany = ½ point, China = 0 pointsCoin 9:
Bohemia pragergroschen of Ferdinand I (1526-1564). Had to have a medieval... Bohemia is more-or-less what we today call the Czech Republic. The clues here are the two-tailed lion (symbol for Bohemia, still used on Czech coins today) and the name of the city in Latin: PRAGENSIS = Prague. Austria would have been accepted for half-point as the "imperial power".
Austria, Czech or Czechoslovakia = ½ pointCoin 10:
Haiti 5 centimes 1958. The national symbol of cannons-flags-and-palm tree has been used on virtually all Haitian coins. The French-style motto might also have helped.
Coin 11:
Spitzbergen 50 roubles 1993. Spitzbergen is Norwegian territory, but the Russians own the mining interests and make these coins. The name of the islands is spelled out in Russian at the top, the map of the islands is at the bottom, and that's a polar bear walking across the middle.
Russia = ½ pointCoin 12:
Manchukuo 1 chiao 1940. Manchukuo (variously spelled) was a Japanese puppet state in Manchuria, northeast China.
Japan = ½ point, China Japanese Puppet State = 1 point, China = 0 pointsCoin 13:
German East Africa 1 heller 1905. Not many places issued "hellers", when German States are excluded.
Germany, East Africa or Tanzania = ½ point, Tangyanyika = 1 pointCoin 14:
Albania (Italian Occupation) 0.5 lek 1940 - That's the Italian king Victor Emmanuel III, but there are two things wrong for that to be an Italian coin: he's wearing an army helmet, and the legend contains some non-Italian words: "MBRET E PER" is in the Albanian language.
Italy = ½ pointCoin 15:
Belgian Congo - Ruanda - Urundi 1 franc 1960. I really needed all three members of the federation for this one - just "Belgian Congo" wouldn't do. It's in Krause as "Ruanda-Urundi", so I would've accepted that, too.
Belgium, Belgian Congo, Zaire or Congo = ½ point, Ruanda-Urundi = 1 pointCoin 16:
Guernsey ½ penny 1971. Not too hard, apparently - look for all the decimal halfpennies and see which British Isle this matches.
Britain = ½ pointCoin 17:
Iran 10 rials 1999. The language is Arabic, the picture is the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. A search of middle-eastern countries (particularly those Muslim ones with a bone to pick with Israel) would find this coin pretty quick.
Coin 18:
Malta 1 lira 1991. This would've had me stumped for ages, looking for a country which issued coins denominated in "Lm", but this was the one coin which every single entrant got correct. I'm in awe.
Coin 19:
French Indochina 1 centime 1943. That's the Vichy name for France, but a search through France in Krause won't find this coin - the trick here is knowing history and geography. During the French Civil War (also known as World War II
), the Free French (Allies) retained control of most of the former French colonies, except for one: French Indochina, held by the Vichy Etat (Axis) with Japanese collusion. That's rice you can see on the coin, there.
France, Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos = ½ pointCoin 20:
Suriname 100 cents 1988. Thought this one would be tricky, but most of you found it no problems.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Posted 02/03/2007 7:27 pm
