How Far Back Can We Go? Second Edition! Ended At 1492 Waiting On 1491

France 1923 10 centimes

A common coin but a nice pick out of a junk box.




Just noticed someone else had posted this coin - so I'll go again

Jersey 1923 twelth shilling

A 'set' of Belgian 1923 coins of 25 Centimes, 10 and 5 centimes. Their obverse design is identical. These holed copper nickel coins have been with us since 1901 (first trials) and since 1903 on higher mintage. The Belgian 25 Centimes coin has been legal tender till 1963, making it the only coin 'surviving' two World Wars.
Nickel coinage filled a 'value gap', replacing the often too bulky copper coins and the too tiny silvers that disappeared through any minor pocket hole...
The Belgian mint had the primer introducing both nickel coins as early as 1860 and holed copper-nickels in 1901. France followed suit near the end of WW-I (a couple of those have been shown).

The ravages of inflation. The German half Mark coins were still made of silver as late as 1919. This one for 500 Marks is made of aluminum and is light as a feather.

I've missed too much over the previous existence of this thread. In fact, I'm not sure that I ever successfully managed to post a coin here. (On second thought, I did, once, when we were on 1961.)
Not anymore. Today is "how many different 1923 coins can I post without breaking the rules" day.
(I mean, I've no idea why, but many of the favorites of my collection are from 1923. And it's not like I specifically bought them because of the date, either. It's the same with 1966, but I missed that one, unfortunately.)

I'll start off with a single coin - one of my earliest numismatic purchases (circa April 2011; if your first thought is "hey, that's when silver prices spiked"... exactly).
It was sold in a holder, labelled "1921" (which it wasn't, obviously, or I wouldn't be posting it now), and reverse side up (the one without the date). The condition was pretty awful (I later found out that it was roughly the higher end of FR-2), and the price was $27 or so, but (remember, April 2011!) this was actually less than the metal value of all that silver.
So I bought it anyway, and upon coming home, discovered that 1921 was a key date... which 1923, which this coin actually was, wasn't. But of course (did I mention April 2011?) it was still supposed to be worth more because it was silver, right? ...Right?
At least it's my only circulating silver coin of such a large size, so it's not like I have any reason to sell it, either.

Anyway, in case you still didn't guess, here it is...


...yeah, a really low grade Peace dollar.

There's another relatively interesting thing about this coin - which I only found out in 2012, well after the purchase - that I didn't mention in this post. Can you guess what it could be?

Oh, and, if rules allow (i.e. if there are any other coins posted in the meantime), I'll try to post some more 1923 coins later today.

Poland, 20 groszy, 1923

The creation of independent Poland was one of those crazy things that nobody was expecting to happen until WWI. Before that, Prussia, Russia and Austria-Hungary co-operated pretty well to keep their respective Poles from trying anything funny. I am still looking for more coins from pre-1939 Poland, but they are not too easy to come by.

Swiss 5 Francs 1923 - a 37mm silver coin!