gxseries

Issued during the WWII era under the Japanese regime as a Japanese puppet state, Manchukuo coins were issued in four different denomination: 1 jiao (10 fen), 5 fen, 1 fen and 5 li (half fen).

In the early years, 1 jiao and 5 fen coins were struck in decent nickel copper and the other two denomination in copper. As the war dragged on, coins were melted down for scrap and replaced with lighter or cheaper metal such as aluminum and eventually ended up as fiber. As you might imagine, these coins would not have been too popular with the public and would have been melted down over the years.

As for the survival rate for these coins,they can be still found at reasonable prices at VF to XF prices. However some years can prove to be illusive despite catalog value or can be a white elephant! Fiber coins for some reason are still over valued in my opinion.

These are a couple of coins which many catalogs underrate:

1933 1 fen

Catalog value suggests that you can find a low grade coin for 10 - 20 dollars. Yes I know mine isn't that great in condition but try and look for a better one. Best of luck! This is the key for the entire copper 1 fen coinage.

1935 5 li

Also a rather underrated coin. Catalog value might suggest 20 - 30 dollars but try to look for one like the above 1933 1 fen.

This has essentially put an end to the easier coins of Manchukuo coins. I still would have to locate a couple of key dates which is 1943 1 jiao (old type) and 1939 5 li - which I unfortunately bought a copy of the 1939 5 li. Still doubting the authenticity of the 1943 1 jiao which I may look for a better and guaranteed genuine example down the road.

Will be making an album version of this - have been upgrading a few coins and many coins are easily in XF to UNC condition, which may be difficult to assemble these days.

Might want to check if you have any tough date coins! Please feel free to post yours.

I was under the impression that TM minted coins with net edge instead of the rope edge.

Igors, didn't notice that they had a different portrait. I had to look at the portrait and compared them side by side - the major difference that I can see is with Anna's clothing around the bust.

Is this what the difference is?

This is a rather interesting one - I don't think it is common to find a similar double struck error coin.

This is the coin that I have.

Sincona has one for sale that looks really similar to what I have.

https://www.numisbids.com/n.php?p=lot&sid=821&lot=141

Don't think I'll come across two similar error coins in near future. What do you reckon?

Sigi, if you can get your hands on Verdicare, I highly recommend you to give it a try. This is one of the links: http://www.wizardcoinsupply.com/products/verdi-care.html

Not too sure how the shipping would work but do inquire.

You get results quicker than olive oil and I had mostly good results. The only exception is when the coin was cleaned and was covered by artificial patina and verdigris - there's not much you can do with either olive oil or Verdicare other than letting it retone.

Give it a test on a lower value 5 kopek before you take my word for it

It can happen IMIS - imagine a couple of hundred years ago, someone kept their coins away and handed them down generation after generation. Fair enough, back in those days, coins were worth some decent amount of money and not many would have kept coins as a hobby.

I would be more surprised if this kind of tradition never occurred. All you need is just one special coin that never appeared in the public to make it in the news.

This is not a bad coin - doesn't seem to be too heavily corroded! I believe you should always obtain a difficult coin despite it's condition if the price is right. You can always upgrade later and not worry about not finding a better example ten years down the road. (if not longer )

That said, I don't remember seeing any 5 kopek EM coins overstruck over 1762 10 kopek. Wow.

I am under the impression that dealers keep in touch with collectors that have a deep passion. From time to time, they might bug collectors to part away with their collection. Afterall, dealers are out there to make money from commission.

Another small source of interesting discovery can be coins which may appear in the market out of the blue. Hidden away in the attic, shipwrecks, found under the ground etc. Those can make things very interesting. I believe that there was a small source of high grade Russian coins that was sold recently on sixbid. Doesn't have to be out of an old known collection.

There's a crap lot of counterfeits / fantasy coins spilling out in the market for the past few years. Regardless of what you say, a fantasy / counterfeit etc will always remain as it is. An investment in a catalog would be a lot cheaper.

You are more than welcome to take this discussion to other places and ask for their opinions. If there is anyone that claims that this is genuine, I would like to know.

Does not look genuine. What is the weight of this coin and is it magnetic?

Thought this was pretty hilarious and cute. Would be an awesome gift to coin collectors that love cats.

http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/09/17/cute-cat-bank-collects-coins-makes-fiscal-responsibility-adorable-%E3%80%90videos%E3%80%91/

I guess the whole idea of this is that sometimes what is considered as "common" coin may not be as easily obtainable as what some may think. Take for instance 1830 EM 2 kopek. This is supposedly easy to obtain in many catalog but when was the last time you saw one? I remember seeing Alex had one and he did say that it was difficult back then. I tried looking for one but it turns out to be harder than I thought.

We also do have some scarce to rare coins in our collection. And then you might find unexpected discovery such as unknown varieties, overdates, overstrikes etc. Sometimes the thrill comes when you find coins that are not documented or not well illustrated.

This was a rather difficult challenge. Would have been a lot easier if I didn't put silly restrictions on myself.

I started this challenge back in 2008 and was determined to find Soviet coins struck from 1988 to 1991. This must be complete with COA and the boxes. Turns out this was not a good idea. If I decided to go with the coins alone, I would have completed them a long time ago. What makes this remarkable is that there's only 12 coins to this yet it took 6 years to hunt them down; the last coin taking at least three years to find! Please note that I was not actively hunting them down.

Note that starting from this year, there is a huge influx of counterfeit / replica of Soviet silver commemorative coins. These are VERY dangerous counterfeits - you might as well check out ebay and have a look. Sellers are still honest enough to claim that they are replicas but if you didn't look at them carefully, you can be fooled.

Presenting a couple of the more beautiful Soviet silver commemorative coin (IMHO)





My photography skills aren't the best and as some of these coins were taken a few years back, I wasn't that good in using the older camera (plus inexperience with taking good photos)

So what was the last coin that I was chasing? Turns out it was this coin... I don't know why this was so difficult - I was certain that Captain Cook or the World Children Summit would be a lot harder.



I don't think the box is original however I guess I'll leave it as it is for now.

The rest of the coins can be seen here:

http://gxseries.com/numis/rus_new_type/soviet_ag_comm.htm

Hope you enjoyed it!

P.S. My recommendation is NOT to start this - unless you want to start chasing them for many years to come. (Or just go for the coins alone)

Was thinking of outsource as the word for it

Don't you reckon that if we are to put the entire forum member collection together, we can put a rather impressive view? Putting gold and platinum coins aside...

I believe the reality is, it's just too complicated to look at various relationship.

Take for instance New Zealand. You would think New Zealand has a mint - yes it does but it's a private mint. However all modern Kiwi coinage were struck overseas such as Australia, Canada, South Africa and Norway.

Some unusual list can include the following: China had coins struck in Austria, Germany, Japan. Russia had coins struck in France, Belgium, Japan. List goes on.

Was randomly looking around and I nearly flipped when I saw this:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/Coins-Paper-Money-/11116/m.html?item=261559393879&hash=item3ce6279e57&pt=US_World_Coins&_ssn=oliver.lv&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&rt=nc

Probably the only coins that I am missing are the 1942 coins (obviously rare) and I think I have the rest - most of them in mint set which I hate to crack out. Not a bad time to search through your junk coin lot and see what you have - you may never know! That's how I found my 1973 15 kopek (which is sold quite high IMHO)

There was a Japanese collector - Sekine that had an impressive collection and a homepage before he sold them off AND took his site down. Can't remember what site it is is now but it was an eye opener.

Turns out this coin looks a lot better than most of my other Sadagura coins! Should upgrade them when I get around to it.

Updated my site of the collection of various Sadagura coins. Have tried to change the color of the coins to match what they really look like.

http://gxseries.com/numis/rus_imperial/sadagura.htm

Details wise, this actually looks very good. I have taken some photos to compare against. I just happened to have the same type and mint by coincedence even though I am not a big fan of this type of coinage.





You can see where the plating clearly


Edge of the traces of copper


Couldn't take a good photo of the lead side however it's almost smooth


The weight of this coin is at 53.80g which is actually within tolerance level of this type of coin. I cannot help wondering if this was actually struck at the mint considering how good the detail is. But again, I don't know of any lead examples. On the other hand, I wonder how easy it was to get lead in such planchet and then copper plate it to make some money out of it.

I posted this thread a couple of years ago and forgot about it until recently. I have been lucky enough to find an example and didn't realize how hard it is look for such example.

Most of the examples of this particular year that I have seen online are corroded and are not common at best. This is probably one of the better examples that I have seen.

This has a nice die crack and has a minor die rotation error.

Presenting 1771 1 para - 3 dengi

This coin has sparked an interest when I first saw it. While Swedish counterfeits of such 5 kopek are known and are quite rare, this brings counterfeit to a new level.

Presenting a copper plated lead 5 kopek. Yes, this is copper plated lead.

If you ask me, an original coin of 1796 AM 5 kopek is not terribly rare. Details are relatively good despite it's condition. While 5 kopek coins were common back then, this was still worth a fair amount of money. Therefore I believe this is a contemporary counterfeit that circulated back then.

I could be wrong and this may be part of a more modern counterfeit. What do you reckon?

Obtained a rather interesting overstruck coin for my world overstruck collection.

This coin is from Azores - a Portuguese colony which is about 1000 miles from Portugal. As of why Portugese coinage was not used and Azores decided to have her own coinage, I do not know.



This is a Azores 1795 10 reals overstruck over Portugal 1791 - 1799 5 reals. If I am not mistaken, essentially all Azores denomination during this time was doubled using the same copper content, i.e. 5 reals got overstruck as 10 reals, 10 reals as 20 reals. Maybe there was a critcial shortage of coins and therefore a fair number had to be imported from Portugal and then re-denomitized?

Would like to know the history of this.

The rest of my overstruck coin collection can be seen here:
http://gxseries.com/numis/overstrike/world_overstrike.htm

Saw a bunch lot of countefeits uploaded to omnicoin and I had to write something about it. The so called expert challenged me to explain why they are counterfeit. I'll refrain from giving exact words but I found it hilarious.

http://omnicoin.com/collection/Yeyong

If you reckon any of those "crowns" are genuine, I would like to know. These are actually very easy to tell.

I think you can use your experience to your advantage. Note that I do not live in the US and therefore I may not understand the culture over there. I never had the guts to be a dealer but admire your courage to give it a shot.

I believe that being a teacher would illustrate that you have to have a good character to start off with. Organization whiz would help as well. I also believe if you have done some sales in coins especially online commerence and demonstrate a reasonable knowledge - it would be very helpful. Sales may come in handy if you have experience in selling thousand dollar goods.

Lastly, this may sound wrong but I believe the coin industry needs more female collectors or dealers.