ColonialCoinsUK

Back in October I mentioned that I was getting the green light to order another of my small Gold coins because of a mixture of money coming in from a bit of OT and a few other sources and I said at the time that I’d probably order a Venezuelan Gold 20 Bolivar from the early 20th century / pre-WWI era.
Well… 5 months later, I finally ordered it.
I was holding off for the longest time because we were simultaneously spending a fair bit of money on things we needed for the house, we were spending a lot on Christmas, and we also had some medical costs and upcoming Vacation costs. We got past most of that, and then my wife changed jobs and got a big raise, so I was finally feeling very happy with the finances as we came out the other side of all that spending… and then it was time for us to go on our vacation, and I didn’t want to order the coin in the run-up to the trip because I didn’t want an expensive coin arriving while we were on a trip. We just went on the trip and got back on the 5th.
So… having waited a few more days, waiting for the billing cycle on the credit card to close and therefore locking the CC company into giving me a free 30 day loan, I pulled the trigger on the coin.
Our personal finances and making sure that we always maintain very healthy cash levels was only part of it. I’m being honest the coin was a little more on the expensive side – usually I’m buying things more in the $550-600 range and this one was $675. So I had been hoping that maybe another seller would list a similar coin to the 1911 MS64 I was looking at for a better price. I’d also looked into other coins and other options, trying to see if there was something else I wanted in the form of a small world gold coin that I felt was priced somewhat more favorably. But… it had been 5 months, and the price hadn’t come down, no others had come up for sale at comparable grades from reputable / established sellers, and I hadn’t seen or come up with anything else I’d rather get… So I decided to pull the trigger on it.
If I’m being honest, I decided it was time in at least in small part because my wife had turned it into a running gag whereby every time it came up she’d poke fun at me and imply that I was just going to waffle forever and talk about it forever and never actually buy the thing. When the wife is actively poking fun of and ridiculing your inaction, I guess it’s time to do something to shut her up.
I sat down in bed with the laptop and ordered it right in front of her while she faked protests about how I was ruining the joke and now she’d have to find something new to tease me about. “Exactly! That’s the whole point!”
In the course of looking for this, I had looked at and also seriously considered getting one of the 1930 Gold 10 Bolivar coins. I had considered getting that and one other small thing and having two smaller gold coins – maybe to pair with my Swiss 10 Franc – instead of 1 slightly larger one. But, clearly I decided against that.
However, in the course of looking at that I was curious about the fact that I was ONLY seeing the 10 Bolivar from 1930 and I wasn’t seeing it from any other dates like I had the 20 Bolivar.
After looking into it, the 10 Bolivar was a 1-year coin that was minted to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Death of Simon Bolivar – his death, not his birth. It was a 1-year circulating commemorative of which only 500,000 were made and only 10% of these were released to the public. The other 450,000 were kept in the Central Bank’s Reserves and partially released to investors. However, because it was a “circulating commemorative” and not a “commemorative” or a bullion issue, and because mintage of the 20 Bolivar stopped in 1912 – before / at the start of the first World War – I think this makes the Gold 10 Bolivar the last gold coin that Venezuela struck for circulation.
I stopped spending most of my hobby money and stopped looking at eBay for the most part around October or November because I didn’t want to spoil any surprises from my wife. I’m glad I did. However, this means I have been hoarding my collecting budget for several months and I have bit of a wad – which is more than enough to pick up a MS65 10 Bolivar to go with the 20 Bolivar, and I may well do just that.
Where they exist (because they don’t for Zimbabwe, at least, not when it was called Zimbabwe), I like having these old gold coins to hold next to the more modern coins from the same country. This ties back to my interest in collections on Hyperinflation and currency debasement and devaluation. I think it’s very cool to be able to hold up an Italian Gold 20 Lire from 1885 and a Brass Italian 200 Lire from 1986 and think about how the currency, it’s value, and its representation changed it 100 years. It’s fun to be able to hold and look at a Venezuelan Gold 20 Bolivar or a 10 Bolivar from 1930 from 1911 next to a steel-core 10 Bolivar from 2004, just before the first redenomination (and the switch to the Bolivar Fuerte) in 2007. Pairing them together can just make for some awesome tangible expressions of the change and what was lost in that 100 years and I hope to be able to show and talk to Ben and Sam about these things in the years to come.
In my recent silence I feel like a duck on the pond - you're not seeing much from me right now, but my feet are working under the surface. I hope to have more to share soon, but this entry is enough for today.

So I made my post a few weeks ago about picking up that 1981 200 Lire and I talked about wanting to get a 1980 because of the design of that coin and how fitting I thought it was for a tribute set to my wife.

At the time I was hitting up eBay to see if I could find any of the 1981 graded by NGC - most likely from this same seller because this seller seems to be about the only one offering modern Italian issues graded by NGC. But I didn't find any.
So that had me looking for raw examples to maybe grade myself for this set because, I really liked that design, my wife liked it, and I wanted to get it.
Sadly... no luck! These things do not seem to age well if they get handled at all. I don't think they do that well wit oxidation and oils from hands and handling. Anyway....
 
I'd about given up for the time and I was feeling a bit bummed about it, thinking this might just be something that'd require time and patience... and then...!
I found this:

I've joked with others that this is one of those moments that gets the paranoid part of your brain going, wondering if the dealers watch the registry and what you post and what the holes in your set are and then the coins you need magically appear! 
But, then you take a closer look, see the cert#, realize this coin is from the same invoice as the 1981 I bought before, realize that this coin was graded before I ever talked about it.
My fantasies and delusions of my own influence aside, this had nothing to do with me. The seller is just submitting and grading things and offering them for sale, as always. They just happen to be coins I want.
So then, why did these magically appear after my post? Well, they probably didn't. They were probably listed and for sale the entire time.
Why then, did I not see them?
Well... likely through a copy and paste issue, the seller had them listed as 1000 Lire coins. And this is totally on the seller - NGC correctly labeled them as 200 Lire, and Italy didn't introduce 500 Lire coins until 1982 and 1000 Lire coins until about 1995. There are no 1980 dated 1000 Lire coins that I'm aware of.
I just got lucky finding these because I did a broad look for "NGC Italy," just to see if anything interesting popped up.
Since it was around Black Friday, everyone was marking things down, and the seller takes offers, I put in an offer for about 80% of their ask and they accepted.
I'm going to cross my fingers and hope these folks keep making my life easy for me on this set:

I gotta say though, the pictures the seller takes of these coins are so unflattering. They look so much shinier and more lustrous and pretty in hand than they do in the seller's images.
As often seems to be the case with me, I'm finding these type sets with different designs more fun to build than long-run date sets that all have the same design. So, while I had thought that I might try making a play to retake the top in the 50 Lire set, this 200 Lire type set seems to be becoming my secondary Italian focus, having mostly built a solid 500 Lire date set. Although I'm very much also interested in a 500 Lire type set that includes the circulating commemorative years. 

While I was shopping for these, I was surprised to find that there are 1980-dated coins that use the more "standard," non-circulating commemorative design. So they issued two different 200 Lire designs in 1980. And this has me wondering waht other years this is true for.

 
In other slightly funny news... You know how, back in May, I talked about how someone came along 15 minutes before an auction ended and sniped a 1983 500 Lire out from under me... 
Well, today, I looked at the one other 500 Lire type set in the registry...  and it has one coin... a 1983... in MS65... that was added in May... right around when I lost that auction to the sniper ...

But... I guess that means it probably wasn't a shill...
There will be no mercy. 

It has been a while but my graded Napoleon typeset is now complete

Congratulations must go to @Mac5 who reached 100% first.
Next challenge will be a Custom Set and will be one coin per mint, only about a third of the way there so that may take some time as most of my Typeset are from Paris - mintmark A.
A project for the next few generations will be the Sets for Italy, Spain, Westphalia, Holland and all the tokens and medals before even attempting date runs. As we don't have any grand children yet I need to have a word with the kids!

It has been a while but my graded Napoleon typeset is now complete

Congratulations must go to @Mac5 who reached 100% first.
Next challenge will be a Custom Set and will be one coin per mint, only about a third of the way there so that may take some time as most of my Typeset are from Paris - mintmark A.
A project for the next few generations will be the Sets for Italy, Spain, Westphalia, Holland and all the tokens and medals before even attempting date runs. As we don't have any grand children yet I need to have a word with the kids!

It has been a while but my graded Napoleon typeset is now complete

Congratulations must go to @Mac5 who reached 100% first.
Next challenge will be a Custom Set and will be one coin per mint, only about a third of the way there so that may take some time as most of my Typeset are from Paris - mintmark A.
A project for the next few generations will be the Sets for Italy, Spain, Westphalia, Holland and all the tokens and medals before even attempting date runs. As we don't have any grand children yet I need to have a word with the kids!

It has been a while but my graded Napoleon typeset is now complete

Congratulations must go to @Mac5 who reached 100% first.
Next challenge will be a Custom Set and will be one coin per mint, only about a third of the way there so that may take some time as most of my Typeset are from Paris - mintmark A.
A project for the next few generations will be the Sets for Italy, Spain, Westphalia, Holland and all the tokens and medals before even attempting date runs. As we don't have any grand children yet I need to have a word with the kids!

Borrowing the title from that line in "Starship Troopers." Anyone else remember that movie? I hear it's 25 years old now?
Anyway...
I feel like I teased this concept months and months ago - probably close to a year ago now - but I never really delivered on it:

I feel like I very much survive on a kind of "one step at a time" incrementalism some days. I got the coins back, I got them in the set. I uploaded new descriptions a while after that. Got new pictures posted a couple months after that. put these in the case a month or so after that, and now I finally drag out all the notes and the plaques during nap time today and took this picture.
So there it is - my latest attempt at giving a "Best Presented" Registry set a physical presentation that lives up to the digital one. And I do look at it in person and in the picture with a lot of pride after about 3 years and a lot of effort to make it a reality.
Some of the coins have "company" and some have "corporation' on the labels for NGC's name I think but I very much view the visual match of the slabs as part of the physical presentation for the sets. I just think it makes the set look better in person - going back to my justification for my "sin" of killing those 25 year old fatty slabs that some of my 10G set was in before 2020.  
The title of the post comes from the fact that, as I was setting this up, I couldn't help but think, if this was set-up at a table at a coin show, with or without the awards, would seeing the coins and notes like this make you want to come up, check it out, and learn more about them?
The case has an extra (24th) slot in it that I'm currently using to let the case store both of the $2 bond coins that came back as MS69s from that submission.
I posted on the PMG side about the fact that Zimbabwe has announced they're coming out with new 1 ounce bullion coins to sell as inflation hedges. It breaks my heart that they're 1 ounce because I can't just casually throw down $1750-1900 for a coin, but I would have loved to have gotten one of those and used it to fill that 24th slot with something unique. Though alternatively I could buy and include one of these old 1989 silver rounds like the one Mike has recently posted an image of - assuming NGC would grade it. I don't know if they have ever graded one or if the "gradability" of those has been tested or confirmed. And it would need to be graded to work in this display.
 
About 3 weeks ago I said on the PMG side that I was drawing up the forms to (finally) make a submission of Venezuelan coins and Italian coins to further my 500L set and to get that Venezuelan hyperinflation coin set off the ground.
About 2 weeks after that I finally get the coins in flips with the right labels and bound them up and I'm working this weekend on finally boxing them up and printing a mailing label  Like I said, progress one very small step at a time!
The new submission is going to actually be very similar to the last one. The last one was 22 Zimbabwe coins with 7 Italian coins. This one is going to be 22 Venezuelan coins paired with 6 Italian coins - 3 500L hole-fillers and 3 1986 coins to help me build out that year set.
I think for now I'm going to hold off on grading another 2003 $10 Zimbabwe coin. The one I had looks better than the AU58 I have graded but I still think it would do MS62-63 at best and I think for now I just need to hold off and see if I can find better options for the $10 and $25 coins, letting those AU58s hold down the fort for now.
 
Edited to add:
I am aware that turn-around times on submissions have come down quite a bit in the last few months. But part of my concerns about getting this submission out and back stems from the desire to have time to get descriptions posted and pictures taken and uploaded. And that process sometimes takes a while or takes a while for me to find time to do it. So ideally I'd like to get the coins back well before December's deadline to have time to get the presentation on the registry sets up to snuff.

Quite a while has passed since I added a coin to my collection - there are plenty to choose from out there but the prices being acheived at auction are now getting really silly, particularly for quality examples of almost anything.
Despite this situation it will come as no surprise that the coin in question was Napoleonic  - a 1808 10 centimes from the Paris mint. Why would I do this when, it is the most common issue, and I already have a couple of high grade examples?? (details on my Registry set).
This mintage is actually made up of two varieities - the normal one and the 'upside down' one. The latter is struck en medaille rather than the usual coin alignment and is by far the much rarer of the two - maybe a few% of the production at best. For years I have been looking at all the 1808A's that have appeared at auction in the hope of finding a good one, I had identified just a few but these had seen extensive circulation and would only grade as Fine at best, so not great and I let them go.
Recently a quality example appeared and it was already graded. Such a variety is often missed, and it wasn't recognised on the label either - unfortunately the auction house realised what it was and so I decided to just pay up
Would NGC now recognise this well established variety? There are also clear varieties for some of the other 10 centime issues and I also check for all of those.
 

Before sharing the results of my NGC submission, I want to thank those who reached out to me during my hiatus. It meant a lot to me that so many not only noticed that I was absent but took the time to check in on me. As some of you know, our lives were temporarily derailed due to a sudden passing of a beloved family member. From there, life got super busy, and with everything going on, coins were the last thing on my mind. A few big things have happened since my journal entry in December: I finished my Ph.D., accepted a full-time faculty position at an R1 University, we inherited a house allowing us to move closer to family, and my wife landed a new job (with a five-figure pay raise!). Despite all of that, the best news is that our family will grow by one in December!!! Although it is perhaps a bit early, I have already started brainstorming ideas to get the kiddo involved in numismatics down the road. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.
I hope to be more active here now that life is slowly returning to normal. On any note, I have a major NGC submission update to share. The last of the submissions shipped out last week, meaning I finally got to see how they graded. I have already shared a few of these, but to keep things simple, I included them here to compliment the original journal entry (link to original thread).

1799 Great Britain proof Farthing with shells – Ex. Matthew Boulton
NGC grade: PF-63 BN 

“1791” France Jean Jacques Rousseau Medal – Ex. Matthew Boulton
NGC grade: MS-64 BN

1800(11) Westminster Fire Office Medal with shells and wrapper – Ex. James Watt Jr. Collection
NGC grade: MS-66 BN

1805 Ireland proof Penny with shells
NGC grade: PF-64 RB

1793 Board of Agriculture Medal with shells and wrapper – Ex. James Watt Jr. Collection
NGC grade: MS-67 BN

1800 George III Preserved from Assassination Medal with shells
NGC grade: MS-66 BN

1803 Boydell's National Edition of Shakespeare's Works with shells
NGC grade: MS-62

1793 Death of Gustavus III medal with shells
NGC grade: MS-66 BN

1793 Execution of Louis XVI of France – Final farewell medal with shells
NGC grade: MS-66 BN
This submission included several other items, but I either do not have an image of them, or it was just a reholder. Overall, I am pleased with the grades. Most of these are top pops, many three or more grade points higher than their counterparts. The only thing left to do now is patiently wait for USPS to deliver them! 

As mentioned in earlier Journal entries on Napoleonic coinage the impact of this period was not restricted to Europe, but global. Of particular interest is the collpase of the Spanish Empire in the America's with one country after another gaining their independence from Spain.

For Guatemala this happened in 1821 when it became part of the new Central American Republic so my tiny Ferdinand VII silver 1/4 Real was an example of the last Spanish coinage struck. This period only lasted a few years until the Central American Civil War broke out (1826-1829) as the constituent territories sought their own paths. Over the next few years various factions, seemly pro and anti the Aycinena family, most notably Carrera, attempted to seize control of the region with the Concordat of 1854 finally providing a formal link between the State and the Catholic church. The 1890s not only saw the US take a larger interest in Latin America, with increased business activity, but also the first civilian President for many decades - Cabrera, revolution again saw a change in the 1920s. In time another military dictator arose - Jorge Ubico (1931-1944) which again culminated in revolution and the installation of Arevalo as President. The military regained power in 1951 and introduced many policies, which caused much suffering for the population, leading to outbreak of the Guatemalan Civil War in 1960 - which went on until 1996!
Election of Portillo brought a degree of peace to the country however reform of the whole system was required and, at times, this was far from easy. Dealing with embedded corruption lead to the most recent change with both Morales (2015) and Giammattei (2020) being elected to address this specific issue.

 
Given all the dramatic changes over the last 200 years it is no surprise that coins have changed from the gold and silver of the Spanish Empire to the base metal issues of today. The late 19th century saw the introduction of banknotes (in pesos) which changed to the Quetzal in the 1920's. Unlike many neighbouring countries the currency has been surpringly consistent for most of this period so I couldn't resist adding to my collection the 'paper' commemorative note released in 2021, thus representing the lifetime of independent Guatemala.

Now to fill in all the gaps

As mentioned in earlier Journal entries on Napoleonic coinage the impact of this period was not restricted to Europe, but global. Of particular interest is the collpase of the Spanish Empire in the America's with one country after another gaining their independence from Spain.

For Guatemala this happened in 1821 when it became part of the new Central American Republic so my tiny Ferdinand VII silver 1/4 Real was an example of the last Spanish coinage struck. This period only lasted a few years until the Central American Civil War broke out (1826-1829) as the constituent territories sought their own paths. Over the next few years various factions, seemly pro and anti the Aycinena family, most notably Carrera, attempted to seize control of the region with the Concordat of 1854 finally providing a formal link between the State and the Catholic church. The 1890s not only saw the US take a larger interest in Latin America, with increased business activity, but also the first civilian President for many decades - Cabrera, revolution again saw a change in the 1920s. In time another military dictator arose - Jorge Ubico (1931-1944) which again culminated in revolution and the installation of Arevalo as President. The military regained power in 1951 and introduced many policies, which caused much suffering for the population, leading to outbreak of the Guatemalan Civil War in 1960 - which went on until 1996!
Election of Portillo brought a degree of peace to the country however reform of the whole system was required and, at times, this was far from easy. Dealing with embedded corruption lead to the most recent change with both Morales (2015) and Giammattei (2020) being elected to address this specific issue.

 
Given all the dramatic changes over the last 200 years it is no surprise that coins have changed from the gold and silver of the Spanish Empire to the base metal issues of today. The late 19th century saw the introduction of banknotes (in pesos) which changed to the Quetzal in the 1920's. Unlike many neighbouring countries the currency has been surpringly consistent for most of this period so I couldn't resist adding to my collection the 'paper' commemorative note released in 2021, thus representing the lifetime of independent Guatemala.

Now to fill in all the gaps

As mentioned in earlier Journal entries on Napoleonic coinage the impact of this period was not restricted to Europe, but global. Of particular interest is the collpase of the Spanish Empire in the America's with one country after another gaining their independence from Spain.

For Guatemala this happened in 1821 when it became part of the new Central American Republic so my tiny Ferdinand VII silver 1/4 Real was an example of the last Spanish coinage struck. This period only lasted a few years until the Central American Civil War broke out (1826-1829) as the constituent territories sought their own paths. Over the next few years various factions, seemly pro and anti the Aycinena family, most notably Carrera, attempted to seize control of the region with the Concordat of 1854 finally providing a formal link between the State and the Catholic church. The 1890s not only saw the US take a larger interest in Latin America, with increased business activity, but also the first civilian President for many decades - Cabrera, revolution again saw a change in the 1920s. In time another military dictator arose - Jorge Ubico (1931-1944) which again culminated in revolution and the installation of Arevalo as President. The military regained power in 1951 and introduced many policies, which caused much suffering for the population, leading to outbreak of the Guatemalan Civil War in 1960 - which went on until 1996!
Election of Portillo brought a degree of peace to the country however reform of the whole system was required and, at times, this was far from easy. Dealing with embedded corruption lead to the most recent change with both Morales (2015) and Giammattei (2020) being elected to address this specific issue.

 
Given all the dramatic changes over the last 200 years it is no surprise that coins have changed from the gold and silver of the Spanish Empire to the base metal issues of today. The late 19th century saw the introduction of banknotes (in pesos) which changed to the Quetzal in the 1920's. Unlike many neighbouring countries the currency has been surpringly consistent for most of this period so I couldn't resist adding to my collection the 'paper' commemorative note released in 2021, thus representing the lifetime of independent Guatemala.

Now to fill in all the gaps

So, after many delays prompted by sickness and other things - in the 2nd half of this week is was my “turn” to be sick - and putting these on hold to look at 500 Lire coins, I’m finally starting to look at the Venezuelan coins to maybe pick out some for a submission and building out a registry set.
But the thing that normally makes all the difference for me in building these sets is building a narrative around the set. Building out these descriptions, the research and the writing often consumes more time than anything else and is what has consumed most of my collecting time. With some sets in the past, I’ve put a lot of emphasis on the designs of the coins and the cultural significance of what’s on them. In some sets I’ve put a lot of emphasis on the historical context and what was going on in the country at the time when that coin or bill was introduced. In some sets I’ve emphasized the hunt and the personal journey of building the set - or some mixture of these.
The Zimbabwe note set leans heavily on the historical context with some information on the cultural importance of the things featured - almost no emphasis on the chase because 100 iterations of “I bought this on eBay" seems a bit boring. The Venezuelan note set has a similar approach but there’s a different ratio / more emphasis is put on the cultural significance of the designs and portraits.
The Zimbabwe coin set leans roughly equally on the cultural significance of the designs and on the chase / the journey of building the set.
I’ve been thinking the last few months about what my approach with this set was going to be - how it was going to look, how am I going to present it. I find it’s always best to “Begin with the End in Mind.”
With these coins I feel like it’s going to be very hard to put much emphasis on the designs and the cultural aspect of what’s on it, for one very important reason. I’m going to quote the information card that came with the sets from the Franklin Mint:
“Venezuela may hold the present-day record for the sameness of the designs used on its circulation coins. Not only do all denominations bear a signed portrait of Simon Bolivar by Albert Desire Barre, Chief Engraver of the Paris Mint (1855-1878), it is the same portrait that has been used most years since the 1870s. This likewise holds true for the coat of arms.”
So, from a design standpoint, from coin to coin, there is very little (almost nothing) to talk about here. The dates and the denominations change with the size of the coin but that’s about it. This is actually a pretty stark contrast to what I ran into with the currency side on PMG with the Venezuela set because the bills featured a large number of endangered animals, national parks, and historical figures - until the people designing their bills kind of “gave up” around 2019 and started slapping the same design on everything in different colors.
So I think this set is going to be more focused on the coins, the historical context behind their introduction, and how what was going on in the country / the inflation made it’s impacts on the coinage.
I’ve been starting to research the coins more and I’ve been finding a few very interesting things.
For example, the 1989 coins I got from these Franklin Mint sets I bought were nickel-plated steel coins that were only issued for 2-3 years, and they are almost all using almost exactly the same design or the same design as pure nickel coins that were issued mostly in the 1970s and the earlier 1980s. And these were the last coins issued from the Fourth Republic of Venezuela before the constitutional change in 1999. There were no Venezuelan coins from 1991 to 1999.
This actually heavily mirrors what happened in Zimbabwe with coins being made out of better / more expensive metals in the 1980s, the switch to steel in the 1990s, a brief halt to production of coinage and then a later re-introduction of new, higher coin denominations. - Zimbabwe was just a lot quicker to abandon coins completely than Venezuela.
I’m also learning that some of these coins were struck at several different mints, and that in a couple of cases a coin was struck for 3 years and struck at a different mint every one of those three years. And I’m wondering if I’m going to be able to learn about if there was some other reason for that. But some of these coins, because of this, have different design / die pairings and varieties to look for.
Even more, I’m realizing that I need to take a magnet to some of these early 2000’s coins to figure out what I have - I’m learning that some of these coins were issued in two different compositions in the same years for a couple of years, with Magnetic steel coins and non-magnetic zinc aluminum coins having the same date with weights, diameters, and thicknesses that are also the same.
And so, this continues to become more complicated.
Among other things, I already knew there was a 2016 50 bolivar coin that I don’t have any examples of. But I’m also learning that there was a 2005-dated 1,000 bolivar coin that I hadn’t known about, and that was apparently the country’s first bimetallic, before the introduction of the 1 Bolivar Fuertes coin in 2007.
Shameless plug for the 500L set but remember what I’ve said before about that, in 1982, being the first circulating bi-metallic coin, with the idea being to use this on higher denomination coins to make them harder to counterfeit. So this has Venezuela introducing bimetallics 23 years after Italy pioneered it. Several of the other coins from this period Casa de la Moneda de Venezuela in Maracay, Venezuela (1999-date). This has me wondering if this one was also produced domestically or if they outsourced the production of a more complicated coin to one of the mints in the UK, Canada, and Germany that they’d used previously - or if those mints were even willing to take the order by 2005.

In a previous Journal Entry (Copper is good - September 2021) I highlighted a Napoleonic medal depicting the column in Place Vendome, Paris which was commissioned to recognise the success of the Grand Armee in the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805.  Following Napoleon's defeat the original Romanesque statue of Napoleon was torn down and replaced by a flag with the fleur-de-lys representing France. 1830 witnessed another revolution in France which saw Louis Phillipe and the Bourbon's back on the throne, albeit for the last time. In 1833, on the anniversary of this new period in French history, a more realistic statue of Napoleon was reinstated on top of the column and in my collection I have a large copper medal by Emile Rogat commemorating this event (Bramsen 1915; Julius 3900 var.; Essling 1685).
This medal has Napoleon's portrait, and in particular the iconic tricorn hat, in very high relief making it quite unusual for the period and also for my collection as I don't have any of the modern high relief coins - so would it fit in a slab??


 

The area in south central Africa now bordered by Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa went through several reincarnations and amalgamations of territories before becoming Zimbabwe in 1980 - apparently they have inflation problems. I have a number of coins, almost all ungraded, from an earlier period, 1923 to 1953, when the area was called Southern Rhodesia and it was under British control.
My original target was to complete a full date run for all of the denominations but after 20 years or so this is still not finished and my excuse is that life just got in the way. One of the great things about collecting coins is that you can start, stop and start again at any time and a few years ago I decided on the smaller goal of trying to put together a graded typeset for Southern Rhodesia for both George V and George VI.
So far my Registry sets for these are still looking a bit sparse although I recently acquired a graded 1939 shilling (PCGS MS62) to make a little progress. As this year has the lowest mintage at 420,000 it is the key date shilling for George VI and at MS62 it is also the highest grade recorded at both PCGS and NGC (when I last looked) so I am very happy with this addition. I should sort through my other coins as some are certainly worth grading, particularly some of the sixpences and threepences and this would start to make the sets a bit more respectable.
That Great Zimbabwe bird seems to get around quite a bit so it must be able to fly as it can't be sat down all the time!.
 

The area in south central Africa now bordered by Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa went through several reincarnations and amalgamations of territories before becoming Zimbabwe in 1980 - apparently they have inflation problems. I have a number of coins, almost all ungraded, from an earlier period, 1923 to 1953, when the area was called Southern Rhodesia and it was under British control.
My original target was to complete a full date run for all of the denominations but after 20 years or so this is still not finished and my excuse is that life just got in the way. One of the great things about collecting coins is that you can start, stop and start again at any time and a few years ago I decided on the smaller goal of trying to put together a graded typeset for Southern Rhodesia for both George V and George VI.
So far my Registry sets for these are still looking a bit sparse although I recently acquired a graded 1939 shilling (PCGS MS62) to make a little progress. As this year has the lowest mintage at 420,000 it is the key date shilling for George VI and at MS62 it is also the highest grade recorded at both PCGS and NGC (when I last looked) so I am very happy with this addition. I should sort through my other coins as some are certainly worth grading, particularly some of the sixpences and threepences and this would start to make the sets a bit more respectable.
That Great Zimbabwe bird seems to get around quite a bit so it must be able to fly as it can't be sat down all the time!.
 

The area in south central Africa now bordered by Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa went through several reincarnations and amalgamations of territories before becoming Zimbabwe in 1980 - apparently they have inflation problems. I have a number of coins, almost all ungraded, from an earlier period, 1923 to 1953, when the area was called Southern Rhodesia and it was under British control.
My original target was to complete a full date run for all of the denominations but after 20 years or so this is still not finished and my excuse is that life just got in the way. One of the great things about collecting coins is that you can start, stop and start again at any time and a few years ago I decided on the smaller goal of trying to put together a graded typeset for Southern Rhodesia for both George V and George VI.
So far my Registry sets for these are still looking a bit sparse although I recently acquired a graded 1939 shilling (PCGS MS62) to make a little progress. As this year has the lowest mintage at 420,000 it is the key date shilling for George VI and at MS62 it is also the highest grade recorded at both PCGS and NGC (when I last looked) so I am very happy with this addition. I should sort through my other coins as some are certainly worth grading, particularly some of the sixpences and threepences and this would start to make the sets a bit more respectable.
That Great Zimbabwe bird seems to get around quite a bit so it must be able to fly as it can't be sat down all the time!.
 

One hundred years ago in 1922 Iceland issued there first ever partial set of legal tender coins the 10 and 25 Aurar's.  With a growing nation that was in desperate need for coinage because all the coins used up to that time was from other nation's like Denmark, Norway or they would use tokens that was issued by large merchants companies that was either based in Iceland or Denmark and even the Faroe Islands. Iceland banned the use of tokens prior to 1922 because merchants can manipulate the cost of such things as bread For instead when the consumer tried to pay for a loaf bread using a token they were given in change for one free rye bread the merchant would tell the person at a later date  that the cost of the bread as risen and the token was no longer acquit for the promise of one free loaf of bread causing the consumer to fork over more funds for something they should have been given for free from the get-go.  The first and only coins for this year was the 10 and 25 Aurar minted in Copenhagen Denmark and in 1925 was when the next denominations was produced the 1 Krona (singular)  and 2 Kronur (plural). It took 100 Aurar's  to make a single 1 Krona and in 1926 was when the final three denominations was produced the 1 Eyrir (singular) and the 2 and 5 Aurar's (plural). It took four years to produce the seven coins needed to complete a set of coins comprising of all denominations.
   The 1 Eyrir and the 2 and 5 Aurar's minted by the Copenhagen mint was made of a 95% copper  4% Tin  1% Zink from 1926 to 1939 but they did mint a few 2 Aurar's dated 1940 before the London's Royal Mint in England Took over the mintage of all the coins dated from 1940 -1942 after Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany. They changed the composition of all the copper coins dated 1940 to 95.5% Cu   3% Sn  1% Zn  but they made one final change for the dated 1942 Copper coins to  97% Cu  0.5% Tn  2.5% Sn . From my understanding according to the records of the Royal Mint the new updated second metal change accrue part way into the production of the 1940 dated 5 Aurar so there are two different metal composition varieties for the 1940 5 Aurar coin but none for the dated 1940 1 Eyrir and 2 Aurar since they were all ready minted. The royal mint did not always produce the individual coin denomination the year that was indicated on the coin and it is believed that some coins was minted as far as two years after the date like some of the coins dated 1942. and the 1940 1 Krona and 2 Kronur was produced as far as into 1944.  On a interesting note Staffen Bjorkman noted in his 15 page summary on Icelandic coins 1918 to1959 he made mention of a 1925 1 Eyrir with a mintage of 4000 pieces which the Icelandic national museum collection never made any mention of one ever having existed but this may only be nothing more then the first batch of 1926 Eyrir's ( 4000 coins ) was just the number of coins that was minted in 1925 for the 1926 Eyrir just like the U.S. mint does by Producing the following year's coins. Record keeping can be a problem if its not written down correctly. There are some interesting varieties for the 1 Eyrir from this time period some known and some not, But that's for another journal.  I have tried to research the Copenhagen mint records online and to no avail I couldn't find any records having to do with the minting of Icelandic coins. Maybe I need to hop on a plane to Denmark. 
Thank you  for reading my journal entry and I'm going to write more about the mintage of Iceland Kingdom Era coinage in my near upcoming  journals       

The Treaty of Amiens was signed in 1802 by France and the UK and ended the War of the Second Coalition and thus the French Revolutionary Wars. The resulting peace in Europe was only temporary with the British declaring war on France only a year later in response to Napoleon's continued and expanding occupation of territory thereby initiating the Napoleonic wars. This conflict then consumed Europe for more than a decade estabilishing the basis for the national boundaries we know today.
Napoleon had a medal struck in response, with the English breaking the Treaty of Amiens represented by a large cat tearing up the Treaty. Over the years I have seen this cat described in auction listings and books as a lion, a leopard or a panther and even a pitbull so which it is?
I posted this question on several forums and the polls favoured a panther whereas the comments seemed to favour a leopard. My original thought was it was a panther as these are usually depicted as maneless lions and, to me, it looked more like that. However it looks like panthers are spotted in heraldry etc and often have what appears to be fire coming from their mouths and ears which this big cat doesn't.
That left maneless lion or a leopard and I would expect a 'lion' to have mane and all other lions seem to have one but I thought leopards had spots - in heraldry it seems not. It is well known that the English Arms are referred to as three lions however I found it interesting that these cats were called leopards until the late 1300's and it is only later than they became lions to the English - with the French and neighbouring nations still referring to them as leopards.
A possible reason for this is that that leopards were thought to be a result of the mating of a lion and the mythical Pard, with the offspring therefore being leo-pards. This mixed heritage meant that leopards could not have young and was therefore also used as a term to describe someone born of adultery as such children were left out of the line of succession.
It would not surprise me that, for such reasons, the English switched to calling them lions whilst the French were still calling the English leopards and hence 'barren bas*&"ds', or whatever the equivalent is in French!
As this medal was struck in France, and blaming the English for ending the Treaty of Amiens, I am therefore going to refer to the big cat as a leopard from now on - of course all this could be complete rubbish and it is the local farm moggy
Any other ideas?

The Treaty of Amiens was signed in 1802 by France and the UK and ended the War of the Second Coalition and thus the French Revolutionary Wars. The resulting peace in Europe was only temporary with the British declaring war on France only a year later in response to Napoleon's continued and expanding occupation of territory thereby initiating the Napoleonic wars. This conflict then consumed Europe for more than a decade estabilishing the basis for the national boundaries we know today.
Napoleon had a medal struck in response, with the English breaking the Treaty of Amiens represented by a large cat tearing up the Treaty. Over the years I have seen this cat described in auction listings and books as a lion, a leopard or a panther and even a pitbull so which it is?
I posted this question on several forums and the polls favoured a panther whereas the comments seemed to favour a leopard. My original thought was it was a panther as these are usually depicted as maneless lions and, to me, it looked more like that. However it looks like panthers are spotted in heraldry etc and often have what appears to be fire coming from their mouths and ears which this big cat doesn't.
That left maneless lion or a leopard and I would expect a 'lion' to have mane and all other lions seem to have one but I thought leopards had spots - in heraldry it seems not. It is well known that the English Arms are referred to as three lions however I found it interesting that these cats were called leopards until the late 1300's and it is only later than they became lions to the English - with the French and neighbouring nations still referring to them as leopards.
A possible reason for this is that that leopards were thought to be a result of the mating of a lion and the mythical Pard, with the offspring therefore being leo-pards. This mixed heritage meant that leopards could not have young and was therefore also used as a term to describe someone born of adultery as such children were left out of the line of succession.
It would not surprise me that, for such reasons, the English switched to calling them lions whilst the French were still calling the English leopards and hence 'barren bas*&"ds', or whatever the equivalent is in French!
As this medal was struck in France, and blaming the English for ending the Treaty of Amiens, I am therefore going to refer to the big cat as a leopard from now on - of course all this could be complete rubbish and it is the local farm moggy
Any other ideas?

The Treaty of Amiens was signed in 1802 by France and the UK and ended the War of the Second Coalition and thus the French Revolutionary Wars. The resulting peace in Europe was only temporary with the British declaring war on France only a year later in response to Napoleon's continued and expanding occupation of territory thereby initiating the Napoleonic wars. This conflict then consumed Europe for more than a decade estabilishing the basis for the national boundaries we know today.
Napoleon had a medal struck in response, with the English breaking the Treaty of Amiens represented by a large cat tearing up the Treaty. Over the years I have seen this cat described in auction listings and books as a lion, a leopard or a panther and even a pitbull so which it is?
I posted this question on several forums and the polls favoured a panther whereas the comments seemed to favour a leopard. My original thought was it was a panther as these are usually depicted as maneless lions and, to me, it looked more like that. However it looks like panthers are spotted in heraldry etc and often have what appears to be fire coming from their mouths and ears which this big cat doesn't.
That left maneless lion or a leopard and I would expect a 'lion' to have mane and all other lions seem to have one but I thought leopards had spots - in heraldry it seems not. It is well known that the English Arms are referred to as three lions however I found it interesting that these cats were called leopards until the late 1300's and it is only later than they became lions to the English - with the French and neighbouring nations still referring to them as leopards.
A possible reason for this is that that leopards were thought to be a result of the mating of a lion and the mythical Pard, with the offspring therefore being leo-pards. This mixed heritage meant that leopards could not have young and was therefore also used as a term to describe someone born of adultery as such children were left out of the line of succession.
It would not surprise me that, for such reasons, the English switched to calling them lions whilst the French were still calling the English leopards and hence 'barren bas*&"ds', or whatever the equivalent is in French!
As this medal was struck in France, and blaming the English for ending the Treaty of Amiens, I am therefore going to refer to the big cat as a leopard from now on - of course all this could be complete rubbish and it is the local farm moggy
Any other ideas?

For many years I have not only been following coins, and medals but also banknotes - and with a username of 'ColonialCoinsUK' it will come as no surprise that the focus of this was the banknotes of the British colonies. Congratulations to Alan Collection Malaysia for their Overall Acheivement Award in the 2021 PMG Registry Awards.
To date I have resisted the urge as I would like to collect everything but the British Empire and the Commonwealth covered many countries, and many years, and I just couldn't pick one area. I was also continually shocked by the prices of high grade examples so sets complimenting my coins of Australia, Canada, South/East/West Africa, Palestine, Hong Kong, Malaya, India and so on was an impossibility. Unforrtunately the prices obtained at the recent January auctions just emphasised this!
My interest in Napoleonic coinage meant that I have also become familiar with the banknotes of some of the other colonial powers e.g. France, Spain and Italy. Although these were typically more affordable than the British issues they still represented a significant challenge given the coins I would prefer to occupy the final slots in some key sets. I expect this is because I tend to be drawn to the more classical designs from the early 20th century rather than more modern issues.
@Revenant has made the jump to successfully collecting both coins and banknotes so it must be possible!
No doubt a Journal entry. or two, may appear over at PMG at some point as I have found what I think is an interesting area and I have even managed to put together a few banknotes to get started.
 

For many years I have not only been following coins, and medals but also banknotes - and with a username of 'ColonialCoinsUK' it will come as no surprise that the focus of this was the banknotes of the British colonies. Congratulations to Alan Collection Malaysia for their Overall Acheivement Award in the 2021 PMG Registry Awards.
To date I have resisted the urge as I would like to collect everything but the British Empire and the Commonwealth covered many countries, and many years, and I just couldn't pick one area. I was also continually shocked by the prices of high grade examples so sets complimenting my coins of Australia, Canada, South/East/West Africa, Palestine, Hong Kong, Malaya, India and so on was an impossibility. Unforrtunately the prices obtained at the recent January auctions just emphasised this!
My interest in Napoleonic coinage meant that I have also become familiar with the banknotes of some of the other colonial powers e.g. France, Spain and Italy. Although these were typically more affordable than the British issues they still represented a significant challenge given the coins I would prefer to occupy the final slots in some key sets. I expect this is because I tend to be drawn to the more classical designs from the early 20th century rather than more modern issues.
@Revenant has made the jump to successfully collecting both coins and banknotes so it must be possible!
No doubt a Journal entry. or two, may appear over at PMG at some point as I have found what I think is an interesting area and I have even managed to put together a few banknotes to get started.
 

For the first time in years I actually had some time over the break and managed to sort through some coins. As I have mentioned a few times my original collection was British sixpences and, in particular Victorian ones (1864 to 1879) bearing die numbers in addition to the date.
In turns out I had nearly 100 such sixpences scattered through various boxes that I had not catalogued properly. Some of these appear to be duplicates, some upgrades, some are die numbers that I was missing, some are unrecorded varieties and a few are even suitable for grading!
I just need to deal with these now - the pile of other British and world coins still needs sorting out though. I hope I am not the only one behind with things.
 

There may not be a true silver crown of an independent Ireland. The closest that I have uncovered would be the silver crown, presumably issued by the Catholic Confederacy of Kilkenny, in 1642-43, although the few examples that appear in auction sales appear to be less than 25g in weight.  These coins are also quite rare.  The next closest example of an Irish silver crown, which I was able to acquire, might just be the "Ormond" crown of the same time (1643-1644), issued by the Earl of Ormond, James Butler, commander of the royalist army in Ireland.  At least it is a silver crown sized coin (my example is 29.71g), most likely minted in Dublin, and during the time when there was an independent government that controlled two-thirds of the island.  This brief period of independence would end in 1653 with the occupation and annexation of Ireland by the Commonwealth of England.   Obverse design, crowned CR for King Charles I.  Reverse V with a small S above for denomination of 5 shillings.