Your Favorite Unpopular Countries Or Series

@X2an



Most gold coins issued were 20 Francs (or Lire/Leu/Corona/Peseta...)

A 20 Francs gold coin under the LMU standard weighs 6.45g with a 0.900 gold fineness.

There have been smaller and larger denominations, but those were rarely found in circulation.

Bullion 'stackers' will be surprised that those 19th-early 20th century gold coins most often sell for a lower premium than their more familiar gold-eagles.

I collect ancient Chinese. In an auction setting, it seems they are very popular, but I seem to be the only one in a retail setting.

I know this is kind of an old thread, but I wanted to thank @X2an for introducing me to LMU coins through his post in this thread. I have wanted to branch out into world coins but didn't know really what to collect. I think I'm going to look into doing some sort of LMU type set or something (starting with silvers)!

I do my best

In fact, the way I noticed it was looking through the online database Numista where I soon started noticing these similarities. Some coins are very cheap (Swiss silver 1/2-, 1- and 2-Frank, they were minted up until 1967 in full LMU standard) and some are not (Liechtenstein and Greece, don't forget Crete!)

I should also add that my interest is not limited to LMU coins, the Scandinavian Monetary Union had a similar system with identical specification coins, and do not forget the silver system the US dollar had up until the end of silver that Panama, Dominican Republic, Colombia and more countries followed.

I already discovered that I had some pre-1967 Swiss silver (I think I only need a 2 Fr. IIRC). Those came from a bunch of foreign coins I have which are still only somewhat sorted. When I was younger and not really interested in world coins, I got some from my grandparents (lived in Germany until 1960), and some from a friend of theirs who is well traveled. The majority of the coins are 1930-1980.

Maybe I'll have to do a Scandinavian Monetary Union set too. Or maybe just include it as "LMU-like" coins. I have to be careful, otherwise this will turn into a "small and medium European silver coins from the late 19th century to early 20th century" set.

I do have a LMU question. Supposedly (according to the LMU Wikipedia article) the Grand Duchy of Finland Made coins to the LMU standard, but just from a little looking around, it seems that most of their silver was .750 or .900. What's up with that? And they have a 25 pennia instead of the expected 20 pennia.

Fact of the matter is that they did, but only for the gold coins (10 & 20 Markkaa), since the currencies went on the gold standard, the LMU's primary reason to exist was to facilitate the circulation of gold coins, giving the the same denominations the same specifications. Even Sweden issued a 10-Franc coin, though with an odd denomination for the Riksdaler Riksmynt in use at that time.

The 0.20-denomination is acually somewhat rare to see. Especially in the later years of the LMU, many countries like France, Belgium and Italy issued 0.25 denominations in Nickel or similar materials. A true LMU-standard such coin would be 1 gram of .900 silver, which for many would be too small of a coin for the value. France issued these for a short while. A coin easy to lose. Unfortunately for people then, the 0.10 large copper/bronze coins were much more common and like the US Large Cent, wasn't quite liked from the public from what I understand because of its large size.

The LMU did extend to the silver coins of 0.5 (mostly), 1, 2 and 5. Lower denominations were free for the countries to regulate however they wanted, as to why Belgium and Switzerland never had "proper" lower denominations.

Again, it's definitely a wide collecting range with plenty of history, as to why it's so fun to collect

@MoonRock,I am glad that other people get a kick over the "little" man with her majesty on the other side!

Looking though what I wrote earlier but now in a different setting, for future readers I feel I need to correct this:




True LMU-standard coins were almost always .835 silver, including these. The only .900 coins were the 5.00 coins, or crowns if you wish, weighing 25 grams. The reason for this is was to "negate" the increased costs of production for the lower denominations, by debasing the lower denominations. Why exactly .835 I don't know. The US (and the countries' using the same specifications) had more weight added in on their 1.00 coins (26.73 grams instead of 25) but the purity remained the same (.900 for all coins following the standard)

Of course, this silver content standard was sometimes broken, some examples being French coinage with .900 1/2-, 1- and 2-Franc silver coins up until the 1860's, Swiss 1/2, 1- and 2-Frank coins between 1850 and 1875 and post-LMU Latvian 5-Lati consisting of .835 silver.

Again, this series is so interesting because of things like these, but I've never seen any large discussion on this subject apart from the "heavier" dollars and the .900 5.00 coins. Kind of a shmae that this "series" is somewhat unheard of and forgotten among most collectors, but hey, I suppose that's lower prices and more quantity for me