For what I can make out there was never a 1 Mils coin under Elizabeth II so here is a complete set of British Cyprus coins. The 3-25 Mils coins are my favourites:




More sets to come.

BTW not sure if anyone can help with this but can anyone advise of a good site to host images of coins. I have an Omnicoin account although find it slightly limiting. The images I have been posting the last coupe of days have been on Photobucket which is a bit of a pig to organise things & flickr limits you to 200 images only on a free account. I know someone on here had theirs on an alternative site so if anyone could help it would be greatly appreciated as I hope to post alot of my images up soon.

Try imagecave or imageshack.

Nice coins, I like the 3 Mils.

- Clive.

Thanks, the 3 Mils one is one of my favourite discontinued coins, shame the Cypriot Euro's didn't follow on in the same vein as they last coins.

Thanks for those suggestions as well I'll have a look over the weekend to see which is best.

Nice coins, Cyprus coins are very collectible too ....

I know I love Cypriot coins, after the Queen Elizbeth II set they released many different ones afterwards (first with the Mils type then with £c) I'm trying to get an example of each from Cyprus. Luckily a trip to Cyprus in July 2007 meant I got all of the currently circulating coins. Also got the Euro set as well

Very nice.

Of these, I find the 5 mils coin even more interesting - a man carrying a copper bar, now that comes close to currency on coins.

Well, that 3 mils piece with the bichrome flying fish was minted in 1955, for the first and last time. Actually the euro and cent coins follow the tradition of displaying three elements - nature, the sea and the history of the country. What is a shame indeed is that they went away from having different designs for each denomination ...

Christian

I think it's more a shame they didn't follow in the same artistic style, I only really like the 1 & 2 Euro coins, the rest are just bog-standard to me (I think the Maltese ones are superior) but looking back at how many times they have changed their coins since the QEII coins, I wouldn't be surpised if Cyprus change the designs after five years (the minimum allowed for each design I believe).

Thanks for clarifying the limited mintage of the 3 mils coin, I presume the other in the QEII set had a ilimted mintage as well. I presume the limited mintage run was due to the small population on the island.

BTW when were these coins withdrawn?

In the mid-1980s. The dates can be found here:
http://www.centralbank.gov.cy/media/pdf/CE...OTESCOINS04.pdf

Christian

Thanks, they are among some of my favourite coins of the ex-empire




Thanks for that link, interesting that coins with the Queens head still circulated along side the "Cyprus Shield" ones, interesting also that the UK never made a 1 mils coin, any reason as to why?

Cannot actually tell to which degree they still circulated. Sometimes a coin is officially taken out of circulation a long time after being out of use (like some older German coins in Austria) while in other cases, coins that are to be replaced do circulate "until the very last day". In this case, we would need a local or a frequent visitor of Cyprus as our voice of authority. The 1 mil piece was obviously a low value coin - when the Cyprus Pound ( = 1000 mils) was introduced in 1955, there was, as you wrote, no such piece, and the Republic of Cyprus (1960-) only made the aluminum mil in 1963, 1971 and 1972.

Maybe issuing a bronze piece (like the 3 and 5 mils coins featuring Elizabeth) would have been too expensive even in 1955, and an "alu" coin would have appeared cheap from a British point of view? Again, my guess only ...

Christian

50 Mils = 1 Shilling = 9 Piastres

Lowest denomination coins in circulation before decimalization and their value in Mils:
1 Piastre = 5.55 Mils
1/2 Piastre = 2.78 Mils

1/4 Piastre would be equal to 1.39 Mils but my guess is that that coin should have been "phased out" at that time (1955).

Jose