Posted 02/23/2015 4:50 pm
The 2 mark 1951 was struck for several years like many of the early West Germany coins with a frozen dates. SAP is correct in his assumption that they were unpopular for the reasons given. I can personally attest to that because I was stationed there from 1956 to 1960. Like our own $2 bill, which can be confused with a $1 bill, people would spend them as soon as they received them because they were to easily confused with a 1 mark piece. As for the restrike 1951G 2 mark, they were struck by a mint employee several years later, along with earlier 5 mark commemoratives,using the original dies. To my knowledge, there is no way to distinguish restrikes from originals.
