Just been looking through the minute remnants of the coins i'd had in my foreign junk box that i sorted out months ago. The vast majority went to Labmom.

The small bagful that remains are mostly Spanish, alot i got from my father are dated in the 1960s and 1970s upto 1980.

Then there's a gap until 1989 and these later coins are the ones i brought back with me after my last trip abroad in the summer of 1993. Now i remember clearly spending these smaller coins, the 25pta with the hole through the middle and the 5ptas and the 1pta.

The coins upto 1980 though are bigger. The question is when did the shrink the coins and when were the larger coins of each denomination demonetised?

The Spanish minted these large types until 1989 (some types), since 1980 there was the World cup series, the 1 Pta. became alum., there was a smaller 100 Ptas. (about the size of a pound) and new 200 and 500 Pesetas coins. (These large coins no longer had the minting year on the star! Note that "Franco" coins circulated all these years alongside "King" coins").
I used to go to Spain a lot and don't remember seeing "large" and "small" coins mixed together, i'm guessing they were out of circulation in 1990???

Jose

I think either 1989 or 1990 would be a good guess, i don't think i saw any large coins either when i was there. It was a long time ago though!


I've just found a few more coins, a Cien Pta which i presumed to be the 100pta (1988 and a bit bigger than a pound), got a 200pta as well, the portrait on that one is pretty awful. Line drawn or what!

And i found two of the larger 1pta coins from 1987 (now you tell me about the stars, i was looking all over on the 1987 1ptas to see if i could find them to no avail!)

I've got some of the brass looking 1ptas as well, including a few Franco ones.I do have a 1980 world cup series 5pta though.



Whilst we're on the dates in stars thing, take a 1957 Franco coin (here we're talking about the date on the coin, not the date of issue), now if that was actually one of the 1957 issues would it have the stars saying 57, or would there be no stars since they'd not be required since for once the date on the coin would actually be the date of issue?

Not having a loupe dating these things plays havoc with my eyes, and i'm short-sighted so seeing things up close really shouldn't be a problem. Not a series for the long-sighted me thinks.

Tha large date is the year of the law regarding the issue of the coin, if there were minted coins in the same year, yes, the star would have that same year. I don't think there were coins with "57" on the star, but i remember that large 5 pesetas exists with 1949*49.

Jose

Ah right i get it now!

So i take it the coinage must have had a fairly big change in 1957? It also explains why most Juan Carlos coins i have are dated 1975!

I must say i do like the date/stars business because as a date collector it would save me alot of money, because i could just go on the big date and not one the star dates, which i could ignore almost as if they were die numbers on UK coins...