Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2024 i World Coin News

Those hot sticky summer days have come around again but at NumisMaster we keep on truckin’ through the heat and humidity to keep you informed and up to date on the world of coins. We’ve circled back to the “A” countries now and are again working our way through the alphabetic list. Approximately 650 new master records were added this month for countries from “A” to “E” and over 750 new pairs of obverse and reverse images were acquired and imported into the system. The 100-count difference means that many older types have now had images added, making identification and the cataloging of your collection or stock a simpler task. Some of the largest concentrations of new types for this month are packed away in Australia, Barbados, Cameroon, Canada and…

Move over Mel Fisher and Davy Jones. Here we go again with a world-class fight over who owns the rights to the “gold doubloons and pieces of eight” that have been located on a fabled shipwreck. This legal battle pits treasure hunters including the government of Colombia, Spain, Bolivian Indigenous groups and a U.S. salvage company. The rights to the sunken treasure are almost as murky as the water in which it is submerged since the location of the shipwreck has been kept secret. It is certain it is situated somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. At stake is the future of a shipwreck that has been dubbed the “holy grail” of such wrecks by experts. The Spanish galleon San José was a 64-gun, three-masted warship that was part of the…

As of the end of 2020, there were about 50.3 billion $1 to $100 bank notes which when combined with metal coins have a total face value of about $2.04 trillion. Going forward, at the end of 2021 the digital balance at the Federal Reserve was about $4.18 trillion, while cash amounted to about $2.21 trillion face value. Digital value has been increasing, but it has yet to make a real dent in the impact of physical cash. Is one better than the other for the economy? Is one better than the other for the environment? Both leave an environmental as well as an economic footprint. The environmental impact of mining and manufacturing of coins is obvious. It involves a resource-intensive process using copper, nickel, zinc, precious metals, and more.…

I had a customer who had built a pretty good Roman Imperial people collection. A coin for every emperor and family member. He sold it to me. It was pretty complete; he was missing about five people. He also had a Byzantine collection. He called it his Romaion collection, which was technically a better name, seeing as that’s what they called themselves. They tended to speak Greek rather than Latin. He was missing about thirteen people. I went looking for them for him. I couldn’t find them at all. We’re marching through the Byzantine Empire period of Turkish history, which is appropriate because that’s what Turkey was for a thousand years. We think of them as different from the Romans, but they didn’t. They thought they were the Roman Empire,…

Could a probate court have undervalued the wealth of a prominent German mayor when he died in 1675? Why are we questioning this value almost 350 years later? It appears Wettin Mayor Johann Dondorf may have salted away more than the 2,500 silver talers and 500 gold ducats, the courts ruled he had at the time of his death. The recent discovery of 285 silver coins encountered in a trench as workers installed a new sewer line at a farmstead appears to prove this to be true. Wettin is a municipality in Wettin-Löbejün in the Saale District of Saxony-Anhalt. The municipality is situated on the River Saale, just north of Halle. The rulers of the Wettin dynasty were electors of the Holy Roman Empire. Johann Dondorf lived in the house…

Turkey is preparing to release a new 5-lira coin into circulation, hopefully without as much controversy as other Turkish coinage experienced in the recent past. Turkey’s last such venture was via issuing a circulating commemorative of this same denomination last year. The coin was met with controversy when the public determined the image of modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk wasn’t accurately depicted. The Oct. 29, 2023 release of the Atatürk coin meant to mark the 100th anniversary of the modern Turkish republic was criticized by social media and the public as depicting the founder lacking two deep lines running down Atatürk’s cheek as well as another on his chin. The General Directorate of Mint and Stamp Printing House stated the images had been “deliberately tampered with” to mislead the…

Stephen Album Rare Coins held its Auction 49 on June 13-16, 2024, at its offices in Santa Rosa, Calif. Solid prices were realized, with the total coming to $2.80 million (including buyer’s fees) on an estimated $2.17 million. The sell-through rate was 90.6 percent. A few highlights from the auction follow (prices include buyer’s fees): LOT 1608: CHINA: HONAN: Kuang Hsu, 1875-1908, brass 10 cash, ND (1905), Y-108A.3A, CL-HON.12, CCC-520, Duan-2586, a very rare pattern struck at the Ferracute Mint, New Jersey, USA, with dies engraved by Charles Barber, the then-chief engraver of the U.S. Mint, a wonderfully toned specimen example! PCGS graded Specimen 64, RR. The Ferracute Machine Company was founded in Bridgeton, NJ in 1863. The company manufactured metal forming presses for a variety of purposes, from producing…

In recent years, many collectors in Germany have often been quite critical of "Münze Deutschland," the official sales agency for collector coins. They felt that the coins released by their country over the last few decades were often uninspiring and, at times, even embarrassing. Despite this, German mints have demonstrated their prowess with innovations like polymer coins, proving they can compete at the highest levels of minting technology. With the launch of a new brand, "Münze Deutschland," there was an effort to stand out among the major players in the industry. This year, Münze Deutschland took a bold risk with an uncertain outcome: they introduced an 11-euro coin for the 2024 European Soccer Championship. For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic (excluding the 25-Euro silver coins),…

One of two often overlooked revolts against the Romans orchestrated by Judaea has been once more brought to light due to a recently uncovered hoard of coins in the city of Lod, Israel. The finds of 94 silver and bronze fourth-century Roman coins were announced on June 16 by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Lod is a town of Benjamin established by Shamed named in 1 Chronicles 8:12; Ezra 2:33; and in Nehemiah 7:37 and 11:35. The Ezra reference is Lod being one of the cities to which the Jews returned from the Babylonian captivity. During the fifth century B.C. Lod was a prominent center for Jewish scholarship and trade. It was renamed Diospolus when it became a Roman colony in about 200 B.C. In modern history Israel Defense Forces occupied…

Make no mistake, counterfeiters are still faking coins as well as bank notes. Counterfeiting higher-value circulating coins can be not only profitable but challenging to detect since the average person is unlikely to take a close look at their “change,” while the feel of a bank note might be sufficient to draw suspicion to what may prove to be a fake. Counterfeit coin discoveries don’t always get the attention they deserve. Numismatic Guaranty Corporation has reported 2023 Silver American Eagles composed of 65 percent copper, 21 percent zinc and 13 percent nickel, with less than a half percent of silver added to this mix. Fortunately, these fakes aren’t too challenging to detect. The planchet is too thick, the security notch is in the wrong place, the coin is about a…

The first coins were found in modern-day Turkey. What was known as the Lydian Kingdom in ancient times used naturally occurring combinations of gold and silver known as electrum. The metal was weighed to determine the value and designs were carved into the sides. These coins are estimated to have been created around 650-490 B.C. The Olympics were originally a religious festival in honor of Zeus held in Olympia, the site of the Sanctuary of Zeus. Athletes came from the city-states from all over the Greek world, as far away as what is now Spain and Turkey. The first Olympic Games is said to have been held in 776 B.C., but other evidence suggests that the games may have existed even earlier than that. The Games were held until 393…