Nalaberong's Weekly Coin Buys

October 3, 2013

1954-B 2 rappen, an elusive Swiss denomination. It hasn't been minted since the 70s.


Very shiny Iranian 10-rial coin showing the tomb of Ferdowsi, pictured next to my old one.


A thick, dumpy Mexican commemorative that I had been searching for.

Big Mexican copper. The centavo denominations moved from silver to copper-nickel to copper (or copper to copper-nickel...)... anyway, the copper versions are big, and 50 centavos is the biggest of the lot.

Funky shapes from Ceylon.


A valuable early East German coin :)

October 16, 2013
$8 of coins.

Danish commemoratives with a high face value. Apparently the Selandia was the first diesel merchant ship.


The Susan B. of Hungary, the large 100-forint coin was unpopular but saw some use. It was replaced by a much better-received bimetallic coin.

East Germany, 2 marks! A big chunk of aluminium, considering most aluminium coins are small and for small denominations.


Stunning West German 2-mark coin, 1957-F. At least MS-64. My favourite and most valuable find in a while


Mikolaj Kopernik: if you were to think that he was German and not Polish, you would be wrong.


A penny with a mintage of 284,000, less than the 1909-S VDB. Krause lists it in Fine at $1.00. World coins are more fun!

Nice coins!

And here's what came in the mail yesterday! I have started using Numista to trade off world coins that I don't much like but got a good deal on for world coins I do like. I paid about $3 for all the coins I traded for these, plus $1.10 shipping in Canada, but I got the stamps for much less than that, so basically I got all these for $3:


Two Taiwanese 10 yuan: 90 and 100 years of the Republic of China. The Centennial one is of note because it is one of those rare coins that stares directly at you.

While Canada turned 100, the USSR turned 50. To celebrate, all the higher denominations got commemorative designs. With the 20-kopek coin, I'm 1 (10-kopek) away from finishing the set...


Two rials! The big one-year type has been wire-brushed which is a huge shame but the other rial is in great condition. It's one of the very first rials minted by the Islamic Republic of Iran, and it's interesting to compare to a rial from 1978 or earlier - the Persian lion has been replaced by the simple text "ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN - 1 RIAL", the wreath around this new text has been changed to a wreath of tulips (symbol of martyrdom), and the wreath around the side with the date (1358) has been extended to fill in the space where there was once a crown.


One Egyptian pound from 2010. Thanks to the large Coptic community in Egypt, its coins have the Christian date on them too. This one is a very nice coin - the design and condition are great

Polish 2 zloty coin. Now all I need is 5 zloty and 10 groszy to complete my Polish modern typeset! (ignoring the bajillions of monometallic 2 zloty commemoratives)


10 Russian rubles, commemorating the same event - the end of the Great Patriotic War (World War 2). I don't have the money or dedication to get all the Soviet/Russian commemoratives like my friend, but I am trying to get every Great Patriotic War commemorative. So far I have 3... 20 years (1965), 60 years (2005), and 65 years (2010).

Well, I'm very interested in mail trades. I buy lots of "unused no gum" stamps, which is "I didn't do anything, honest, officer" talk for "stamps that Canada Post forgot to mark", so shipping cost is not prohibitive (a lettermail envelope can hold up to 50 grams of coins to America for $1.10). Let me know what you'd let go!

Nice coins! Looking forward to our trade on numista:)

It's Friday... which is mail's favourite day to arrive.

Here are a few nice Mexican coins, courtesy of Numista member nguzman.

I will also photograph them with my own coins, because Mexican coins are pretty interesting and I have plenty of fun facts about them. You've been warned.

And don't get worried, asking to see the other sides - all Mexican coins have the Mexican coat of arms, which looks pretty much the same on all of these coins.

Here's Eisenhower's little sister, with two exposed breasts featured dead center. Unlike the Type 1 Standing Liberty quarter, the stylized frontal nudity here lasted 3 years before inflation, not good taste, rendered this design obsolete. Oh well...

And yes, it is just a touch smaller than the Eisenhower dollar. Here it is on top of one... can you Ike experts determine the year? (This is a joke)

Here it is next to the other Mexican indigenous cultural coins of its era. The 10 pesos coin isn't shown, because it featured the non-indigenous Miguel Hidalgo. It was a dead ringer for a large 50p.


Here's 10 old centavos. This coin is pretty grimy with some verdigris... making it a perfect candidate for the ultrasonic cleaner. Some of that stuff should come off. If it works out, I'll post "after" pictures under the same lighting... (dark Canadian winter, interrupted by my LED desk light held at a slight angle so my camera doesn't cast a shadow)

This completes my set of post-silver copper denominations:

Most of these were downsized later on, and turned to copper-nickel. Here are the same coins, but different:

For scale:


Here's a very nice commemorative (Mexican Army, 100 years) that was only announced in August 2013. It will circulate alongside $20 coins featuring an Aztec god, two types featuring the Nobel laureate for literature in 1990 (Octavio Paz), and the occasional .925 silver type with Miguel Hidalgo, one of which I saved from a junk bin at a highly suspect gold-buying store. Fiat is certain to fail soon, which is why you should give yours to the store-owner.


This may be one of the first of these coins to make it to Canada - and hey, when are we going to make a circulating commemorative for our Nobel laureate in Literature? I'm waiting!

Commemorative 5 pesos! Mexico is subject to a lucky accident - independence from Spain happened exactly 100 years before the revolution that made the Mexican government what it is today. So the 2010 commemorative $5 coins got to commemorate both a centennial AND bicentennial. Now I have 8 of these commemoratives... of course I want the full set.


I also got the small types of 20 and 50 centavos. These coins are worth very little... about 2 and 4 cents USD. They used to be scalloped aluminum-bronze, but now they are stainless steel. Fun fact: 20 centavos has segmented reeding, which (I guess) isn't actually too expensive to produce. This reminds me of the Polish 5 groszy coin.

Here they are on top of the coins they replaced:


All right, that's all for now. If only there was some way to produce my own type album... I was thinking a compass and cardboard, but...