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 Replies: 12 / Views: 1,731 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
Another one of my random thoughts...
The world has seen a lot of very powerful people preside over very large nations for a very long time. Usually, either a name or a picture of the ruler gets put on the currency of the empire.
If you were to try to collect a "one example of each type of coin with a monarch's likeness" set, who would result in the biggest collection?
Some of the top contenders off the top of my head:
- Elizabeth II
- Victoria
- Augustus
- George V
- I am sure someone from the Spanish empire, but I don't collect those issues
- Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius etc
I know that someone tried to assemble a "one from each colony" Elizabeth II set, and it proved to be an enormous number of coins. Still, Victoria and George V ruled a bigger dominion, and Rome was famous for even short lived emperors who put out 300+ different designs across the empire. Edited by Finn235
08/26/2016 4:46 pm
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2233 Posts |
If you're counting U.S. presidents I would've thought Abe Lincoln would be able to knock all those out of the water.
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
1118 Posts |
If you are including non-circulating legal tender coins from places like Canada, Niue and Cooks Island Queen Elizabeth the second wins hands down.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
94367 Posts |
So now wait - would different images of a monarch like Victoria (Young Head, Old Head, etc) on, say, a Large Penny count as multiple issues or just one (ie, Victoria on a Large Penny)?
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
12437 Posts |
Lincoln's effigy is on more than a half trillion coins, he wins the race by a country mile.
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Valued Member
United States
321 Posts |
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Bedrock of the Community
United Kingdom
17959 Posts |
I'd say it was Queen Elizabeth II, as far as different coin designs with the same person's portrait go. Although the British Empire was at its peak under Victoria, many British colonies and territories didn't issue their own coins at that time. It was in the 1960s and 1970s that the real explosion started with places like the Bahamas, Falkland Islands, Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Gibraltar, British Virgin Islands etc. all jumping on the collector bandwagon and issuing their own coins.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
8137 Posts |
 with NumisRob. Elizabeth II is on a ton of coins. Numista has 6,560 types recorded with the lettering "Elizabeth II" and 472 coins with the Lettering "Elizabeth the Second" Note that these numbers are individual TYPES, not mintage numbers. IMO, Elizabeth has Lincoln beat by a long shot. |
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Valued Member
Slovenia
459 Posts |
That's funny, just yesterday me and my girlfriend talked about the very same thing :)
But we talked about total mintages, not types.
My guess would also be Elisabeth II. But only a guess. :)
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1314 Posts |
Does Lincoln count twice on Memorial cents?
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Pillar of the Community
United States
536 Posts |
The OP said "type of coin" so the quintillion Lincoln cents only comes down to 8.
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Moderator
 Australia
16842 Posts |
Elizabeth II is the clear frontrunner in modern times, simply because of the sheer number of coin-issuing countries that use her portrait. Some of those countries are flags-of-convenience for corporate mints that churn out an astonishing variety of coins: the Isle of Man is a Pobjoy Mint flag and has, according to Krause, issued over 1500 coin designs, almost all of which feature QE2's portrait (I am assuming here that the OP's definition of "coin" also includes NCLT and not just circulation coins).
But in terms of sheer numbers of different types of coins made by various coin-issuing entities, I'd reckon some of the Roman emperors might give Elizabeth II a run for her money, especially if you decide not to include NCLT in QE2's count. In terms of sheer diversity, I think the Roman series maxes out during the Severan dynasty, somewhere around the reign of Caracalla. Besides the several hundred "Roman" and "Romano-Egyptian" types issued under his reign, there were hundreds of cities throughout the eastern half of the Empire that issued coinages, and each of those cities issued several dozen different coin types, on average. The problem here is, of course, that some mintages were very low to start with, and there are no doubt many coin types that were issued but no examples have survived to the present day. So we can never know for sure just how many different coin types were originally issued with Caracalla's portrait.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
7096 Posts |
A type set of Elizabeth 2nd coins would indeed be a huge undertaking
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Replies: 12 / Views: 1,731 |
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Posted 08/26/2016 4:46 pm
