Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2020 i World Coin News

THE PROVENANCE OF a coin, or in this case a military decoration, can be important. This can be due to the potential of the item otherwise being reclaimed by an individual or by a foreign nation due to the object being family or national patrimony. This scenario has played out many times for American collectors owning ancient coins. Collectors and museums have needed to defend the legitimacy of their ownership due to the coins having being illicitly sold, having been sold originating from a country where it was illegal to export them. Israel and Turkey are among countries with strict laws regarding the export of ancient coins found within their borders. The well-known U.S. 1933 $20 gold coins are, with specially arranged exceptions, illegal to own within the United States.…

ON APRIL 10 Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Robert Redfield said it will take “very aggressive” contact tracing of who may test positive for coronavirus for the United States to return to “normal.” When Redfield’s comment was repeated later on Facebook one individual posted the comment, “Got it. Leave the phones at home and pay in cash.” In early May an outbreak of the coronavirus in South Korea was quickly quarantined by tracing the bug back to several nightclubs, then tracking the electronic payments made at those establishments to find and quarantine everyone identified as having been there within specific dates. It’s great work if you look at this tracing effort from a public health perspective. The problem—these were gay nightclubs in a country where a…

LIBYA HAS BEEN in a continual civil war since the overthrow of dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Until 2014 it appeared the oil rich African nation might become a democracy, but this possibility disintegrated as rival governments appeared. Since that time the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord, led by its United National backed Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, has been at odds with the Tobruck government whose legitimacy is based on disputed election results. The Tobruck government appointed Marshal Khalifa Haftar to lead the Libyan National Army. The GNA is backed by the UN as well as an assortment of western countries including the United States as well as Italy, Qatar, and Turkey. The competing LNA is supported by Egypt, France, Jordan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.…

WHEN I SPOKE with Steve Ivy of Heritage Galleries back in early May, we touched on the subject of the American Numismatic Association convention set for August and the accompanying Heritage Galleries auction scheduled to take place at the event. At that time Ivy told me that they had some good consignments coming in and things were starting to “percolate.” Ivy was hopeful that the ANA would take place as scheduled, but holding the auction in Dallas was also an option. Now that the ANA has suspended the August dates and Pittsburgh location, we will have to wait and see if alternate arrangements will be made and if Heritage will shift the sale along with the ANA changes or keep their dates and hold it in Dallas. Either way, some…

IN 2019 WE saw a lot of 50th Anniversary Apollo 11 Moon Landing coins being released. Many had great designs and several were really outstanding in their concepts and execution of the final product. You might remember the stunning United States Mint coins using the domed-cupped technology, which took some time to achieve an accurate strike on the 5-ounce, 3-inch diameter silver planchet or the Monnaie de Paris silver strike with the polymer injected field in which you could view the moon in the dark blue night sky. The Royal Australian Mint and the Royal Spanish Mint each designed coins featuring the large dish tracking stations used to keep tabs on Apollo 11 and to broadcast the step we all saw Armstrong make from the landing module to become the…

I’M AWARE THAT I write this for an audience that, mostly, has never thought about Tajikistan before and won’t again after these articles are all in the past. We go, “Where is it? Who lives there?” and move on. We never hear about it in the news, like we never hear about Guyana or Vanuatu. Then I assert that the big, historical Tajik cities are actually in Uzbekistan. Dushanbe, the capital, is about as far from Tehran as New York City is from Denver, as far from Kabul as Los Angeles is from San Francisco. Back in the horse era it was many days’ journey, and a key factor of horse times was that almost nobody had a horse. If they went anywhere, they walked. Side note: The Fergana Valley…

I have an 1844 Canadian halfpenny issued on the Bank of Montreal. I have never seen anything about such a coin and was wondering if it is a rarity. If you know anything about this coin I would like to know. Canadian confederation took place in 1858. A unified coinage commenced that year. Prior to that date individual entities issued their own token coins, this being similar to the colonial issues of the United States prior to 1793. Independently issued Canadian pre-confederation coins were issued in halfpenny and penny denominations, while Canada’s decimal currency is issued in cents and higher denominations that mirror our own coinage. There are six varieties of the 1844 Bank of Montreal halfpennies, depending on the short or long nose on the beaver and short, medium,…

MANY COUNTRIES DON’T mint their own coins or print their own bank notes. These are farmed out to government or privately owned mints around the world. The contracts for physical currency can be lucrative and for that reason often encourage spirited bidding among competing coin and bank note producers. Not every mint that coins money is interested in fulfilling contracts exclusively for circulation coinage. Some of these mints make arrangements with countries through which the mint will strike non-circulating legal tender commemorative coins. Often the arrangement involves the mint or its distributors determining what subject will appear on these coins, making the coins attractive to specifically targeted markets that may not necessarily be traditional coin collectors. In return the country whose name appears on these NCLT coins receives some monetary…

THE U.S. BANK note is accepted in many countries around the world. U.S. money has totally replaced domestic currency in five U.S. territories and seven sovereign nations. Regarding Cambodia, an Internet posting by MoveToCambodia.com tells us: “Most tourist-oriented businesses quote prices in dollars, as do most grocery stores in the larger cities. Small stores may quote prices in riel, but they will all accept dollars as payment. Unlike in many countries, if you pay in U.S. dollars the exchange rate you will get is quite fair.” SmarterTravel.com adds, “Not only is the country budget-friendly, but cash is king in Cambodia—American cash, that is. You won’t need much of it: Travelers can easily live on less than $50 a day and may never need to change over to the official Cambodian…

TURKEY HAS AN inflation rate problem. During 2018 the rate was at 16.33 percent. This rate declined to 15.18 percent during 2019, and is currently estimated to be at 12 percent. While this rate may not be desirable, Turkey’s currency is more desirable to someone living in war torn northern Syria than is Syria’s pound currency system. Since Syria is under an economic embargo imposed by the United States and other countries it is difficult to compare Syria’s inflation rate to that of Turkey, which is a U.S. ally. According to TradingEconomics.com, “In Syria, the most important categories in the consumer price index are food and non-alcoholic beverages (40 percent of the total weight); housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels (25.5 percent); and transport (seven percent).” Taking that into…

THE FOLKS AT Stephen Album Rare Coins bring a substantial base of combined knowledge to the process of cataloging their high quality, diverse consignments. I think also that their bidders tend to be very well versed in the specialized fields in which they collect or trade. It is for these two broad reasons that I really enjoy bringing our readers previews or reviews of the SARC live and online auctions. SARC Auction 37 was held June 11-14, 2020, at their offices in Santa Rosa, Calif., with great results. Both the strength of the coin market and of the SARC business model was on display as high prices and a huge sell-through of 96.5 percent of lots sold made this a fun event for all involved. I asked Michael Barry, Chief…

PERTH MINT CONTINUES their celebration of the 30th Anniversary of the Australian Kookaburra with the release on June 2 of a 2-ounce silver proof gilded high relief 2 dollar coin. The high relief with selective gilding is a first for the Perth Mint. They used 24-carat gold on the high-relief Kookaburra of the reverse design created by well-known graphic designer Jennifer McKenna. The reeded edge and outer ring of each side also hosts the 24-carat gold gilding. The obverse offers the anniversary dates 1990 and 2020, divided by designer Jody Clark’s effigy of Queen Elizabeth II. Below that, at the center of the obverse, Perth Mint has honored long-time designer Stuart Devlin by featuring his original Kookaburra design with Australia’s most well-known bird perched on a tree branch. This is…

The World Coin News club show and commercial events calendar is a guide to events with a focus for world-coin collectors. Domestic events scheduled up to 10 weeks in advance of the issue date and foreign events up to six months in advance are listed. Abbreviations used: “A” – Admission charge; “T” – number of tables; “F” – Table fee; “N/A” – not available. Other data required for submitting a listing: name and address of show site, and name and address of bourse chairman or other contact person. AUGUST Aug 1 TN, Knoxville. Knoxville Coin & Currency Show. Rothchild Catering & Conference Center, 8807 Kingston Pike. SH: 9am - 4pm. A: Free. T: 20. F: $65. Robert Bruner, POB 465, Strawberry Plains, TN, 37871. PH: 865- 660-8692 or beavercreekcoins@gmail.com. Aug…

IVAN V AND Peter I became co-czars of Russia in 1682, but Ivan died in January 1696; Peter was now the sole ruler of a vast empire. From this point, the nation would never again practice the ancient Muscovite ways as the people were dragged by the giant czar into a new age. One of the most important projects undertaken by Peter was the gradual reform of the archaic monetary system; his father Alexis had moved too quickly in the 1650s and riots had resulted. Peter was determined not to make the same error and the first step, in 1696, was merely to place a date on the wire kopecks. Even the dating was unlikely to arouse any interest at first because Peter ordered that the old Russian system be…

DR. RAMON CARRILLO (1906-1956) was a renounced neurosurgeon, doctor of sanitation, and gold medal recipient at the Medical School in Buenos Aires. Carrillo served as the health minister for Argentina for eight years during the administration of President Juan Peron. During the period Carrillo served in this capacity, he supervised the opening of 244 hospitals. He was successful in ending malaria and stopping an epidemic of the feared bubonic plague in Buenos Aires. Carrillo was also responsible for a significant decline in the death rate from tuberculosis, and in the average longevity of Argentine citizens. Carrillo’s image will be accompanied by that of Cecilia Grierson (1859–1934), Argentina’s first female doctor. Grierson was a teacher in the Argentine province of Entre Rios, then in Uruguay prior to enrolling in the all-male…

IN AN ACT certain to heighten tensions between the government of Yemen and the competing Southern Transitional Council separatist government the STC seized the equivalent of 255 million USD June 17 in freshly printed bank notes, the notes to have been delivered to the Central Bank of Yemen in Aden. The 64 billion riyals value in bank notes was being delivered by convoy. While an unnamed Yemeni government source called the seizure “piracy,” separatists described the seizure as being “part of several measures to end sources of corruption and to prevent the use of public money in supporting terrorism.” The bank notes were reportedly taken to a separatist military base in the same city. According to Interfax, “The incident did take place in the southern Yemeni capital city of Aden.”…

NUMISMATIC STUDIES EMPLOY many techniques used in related fields of science. Tomography involves using a penetrating wave to image a section of something. It has been useful in archeology, astrophysics, atmospheric science, biology, geophysics, material science, oceanography, plasma physics, quantum information, radiology, and now numismatics. Tomography is among the techniques being employed by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna, Russia), Kazan Federal University, and Khalikov Institute of Archeology (Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, Kazan, Russia) as the three organizations study the physical properties of medieval coins found in what had once been the territory of the Volga Bulgar. The initial results of the study were published May 7 in the paper Studies of Coins of Medieval Volga Bulgaria by Neutron Diffraction and Tomography. The paper presents the chemical and structural…

AT THE WORLD Money Fair in February we saw the preliminary designs and test pieces for NumisCollect’s new Palau Anubis coin. Its’ three-dimensional ultra-high relief is achieved through the use of Smartminting technology developed by Mayer’s Mint and CIT. Struck with three ounces of silver, this stunning 20-dollar Palau issue is about 65 mm top to bottom. Fully Obsidian black-plated and with partial gilding, it makes a great display piece for those wanting to enjoy and share their interest in Egyptian history with their friends and visitors. For those less knowledgeable in Egyptian history, NumisCollect provides a great background history for Anubis. “Anubis or Inpu, Anpu in Ancient Egyptian is the Greek name of the god of death, mummification, embalming, the afterlife, cemeteries, tombs, and the Underworld, in ancient Egyptian…

THE SPANISH LEGION was established on the model provided by the French Foreign Legion, but also incorporated elements of the Japanese samurai code of honor. Founded in January 1920 by royal decree of King Alfonso XIII, but based in Spanish military history going back to the Habsburg Empire, the Legion was initially commanded by Jose Millán Astray. He molded it into a professional military unit designed to fight in the Morocco campaigns. The men were trained to be tough and fast. They were pretty merciless in Morocco and truly brutal in their efforts to end what had become a 7-year rebellion against Spanish rule. The Spanish Legion played similar roles in suppressing a workers’ uprising in Asturias in 1934 and were a major force on the Nationalist side from early…