1980 Coins Of Equatorial Guinea

It appears that from 1979 until fairly recently there had been 12 attempted successful or unsuccessful coups in that country. Perhaps he was one of the early ones and not long in power. Interesting topic and worth some investigation (when and if I find time).

The full name is Tomas Engono Nkogo. Despite extensive research done by others, no one seems to know who he is. It is interesting indeed...

Supposedly the 1980 circulation coins were never issued and were destroyed or melted down, which gives credence to the theory that this guy, whoever he is, wasn't around very long, and the next guy didn't want someone elses portrait on the coins. A few coins did escape however, and are offered from time to time. I have a 1 and a 50 and they look like they might be from a mint or specimen set. There are also 2 offered on ebay. The mystery man remains a mystery.

I asked Gerhard Schon of "Welt Munzkatalog" about this - he has Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo in his catalog - so he asked George Cuhaj @ Krause. Anyway the upshot of it all is that there is as much known about this person in this thread as by any of them who produce the catalogs.....

Note that the seller uses "Catalog: Schön 56" for his info, the very same Gerhard I mentioned in my previous post :)

I think all that really proves is that the author of that website uses Schon rather than Krause as his primary information source; it doesn't answer which catalogue (if either) is actually correct.

In order to track down actual answers to this riddle, we need to find some reliable primary-source information. Original Mint Packaging would be handy, but unfortunately these coins don't appear to have ever been issued in official mint sets. We could try to find out which mint actually struck these coins, and here I may have a clue: these coins bear "Spanish dates" - the date on the obverse is actually the date the dies were made; the actual date the coin was struck is inside the tiny stars to either side of the date. That to me is a strong pointer that the Spanish Royal Mint was the manufacturer. If any source material still exists, I suspect it's in the archives of the Spanish mint. Perhaps enquiries can be directed there. Spanish Mint website.