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Egypt 2 Qirsh 1944 - Why So Common?

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X2an's Avatar
Sweden
1078 Posts
 Posted 01/28/2018  5:19 pm Show Profile   Bookmark this topic Add X2an to your friends list Get a Link to this Message Number of Subscribers
Although I've been buying all I've see lately, I've now got 6 of these. None have been much above melt. The mintage was officially just 32 000 but they seem quite common, one of the most common Egyptian silver coins out there from my experience.

So why are they so common? Obviously very few have been lost from 1944 to now judging by volumes still out there. Could it have been that because of their odd shape, collectors as well as the general public immediately hoarded them? Judging by the wear on 4 out of six I have, I assume they did indeed see proper circulation, i.e. they weren't just issued for collectors.

Or was it inflation? This is the last silver issue of the 2 Qirsh coin, already being diluted to .500 silver from a few years before.

Could their avalibility around the world be because of the war, in which soldiers brought these funny-looking coins back home in droves?

I'd love to hear other peoples' thoughts or experiences on this because it doesn't make much sense to me how such a small mintage coin can be so common and cheap while being somewhat old and from a somewhat obscure country (through my western point of view).
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Russian Federation
5180 Posts
 Posted 01/28/2018  5:40 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add january1may to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
I suspect that the actual answer is "mintage wasn't actually 32,000".
In some other similar situations, it turned out that a few zeroes in the mintage figures were lost somewhere in transmission.

Best I can tell, from several previous discussion about this type, this isn't the case - or, at least, all the catalogs anyone could find gave a figure corresponding to 32,000.
Even so, it could easily turn out that, while the official mintage really was 32,000 for some reason, a lot more coins of the type were minted in reality.

I do appreciate the search for other possibilities; but I personally feel that it is the 32,000 mintage figure that is the weakest part there.
Mind you, as a circulating hexagonal silver, it's a pretty unique and interesting type anyway.
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X2an's Avatar
Sweden
1078 Posts
 Posted 01/30/2018  3:08 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add X2an to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
Thanks for your thoughts.

I saw the pieces were minted at The Royal Mint in the UK, so that makes me think less of the figure being distored somehow, but it can however still certainly be the case that the figure is simply wrong. It's quite dissatisfying coming to the conclusion that the figure is wrong - and the mintage is therefore unknown and the "current" figure is incredibly misleading.

It's the size and the price that gets me about these coins. Cheap, but funny looking
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Sap's Avatar
Australia
16868 Posts
 Posted 01/30/2018  11:42 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Sap to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
I have one, and it's not the first one I have owned; they quite commonly turn up here in Australia as Australian soldiers passed through Egypt coming to and from the battlefields of WWII. I was unaware they were supposed to be a low-mintage coin.

I will check my alternate sources when I get home, but I suspect we'll find that it's just a "wrong symbol for decimal point" being used, and the mintage is actually 32 million. Which would seem to be more in line with their availability and realised prices.
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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