gxseries

Spitsbergen coinage is interesting - it's issued for a Russian coal mining town off an island that belongs to Norway. All coins were issued in Russia in 1946, 1993 and 1998. I'm missing just three coins. My collection can be found here: http://gxseries.com/numis/spitsbergen/spitsbergen.htm Please feel free to post some of yours.

Another 20 more coins to go so keep on posting!

There's this book about 300 years of St. Petersburg mint. This book is peppered with a lot of illustrations. Might as well see if I can scan some of the better ones. A very nice book that one-kuna sold me a while ago. I also have a set of postcards issued by the Hermitage museum I believe. It could be covered by some of the pictures shown earlier. Have to dig that out...

Don't ever wash coins with soap unless you want the value of the coin to drop drastically! There's nothing wrong with this patina as it is. Only exception when it's needed is when it's covered with verdigris.

Here's another give away. The first coin that I've upload to omnicoin is this 1709 kopek uploaded on the 8th September 2005. It has been almost 8 years before I'm close to hitting the 5000 coin mark. To celebrate this event, I've decided to do another giveaway. Giveaway will be a mixture of world coins - it will be fun! Will ship anywhere. All you need to do is to guess the country and denomination, i.e. China 1 fen, Russia 10 kopek, Australia 1 dollar and so forth. I'll pick the first guess that is correct. In the case where no one has guessed it right, I'll pick a guess that's close. Currently I'm at 4973 and there's another 27 coins to go. I've already photographed more than one hundred but they will take some time as I have to mess around in photoshop to make sure the alignment is correct.

Names are in and I announce that ikaros is the winner. Congradulations! Will pm for details.

Is there a mintmark SPMD anywhere on the medal? Any letters on the edge?

Reckon it has been a tough year for everyone and it's not an exception to me either. Hope yours have been good. Haven't seen a giveaway for a while and thought I might as well start one. No gimmericks and it's abosolutely free to those who aren't aware of giveaways. I've got more free time recently and been cleaning out my room. Hence you can see me uploading rather interesting coins on omnicoin. There's a lot more to come... easily in hundreds. Please feel free to browse through them. As mentioned, this is a random giveaway so feel free to enter your post in. All you have to do is to just reply and I'll randomly pick a winner within the next 24 hours. No need for any fanciful replies / essay writing although something more interesting instead of "I'm in" would be nice. So why am I doing this? I think it's a sign for me to chill out and have a good break as I have been working too hard. At the same time, it's also a way of saying thanks to our forum members here. I've been through poor student life and kind members here have sent me coins during difficult times. It's time for me to share what I have experienced. Lot will most likely be a mixture of random world coins as well as Australian coins. Can't really send a lot due to weight constraint and please don't expect a fortune in it.

Steve, think I got the hang of it. Thanks. Will have to mess around with this in photoshop. That said, shouldn't the 1757 - 1762 2 kopek alignment be set 90 degrees clockwise instead of anti-clockwise? (second bottom left picture) Nevertheless a neat coin to have. Congradulations!

I'll be honest - I can't quite see the underlaying image of the Baroque kopek. The orientation of the Baroque kopek shown cannot possibly be correct as it was struck in coin alignment instead of medal alignment.

Scrap metal price - it's not genuine. A fantasy coin.

Found this by pure luck: http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?icep_ff3=2&pub=5574633083&toolid=10001&campid=5335826004&customid=&ipn=psmain&icep_vectorid=229466&kwid=902099&mtid=824&kw=lg&icep_item=290868929944 Yes I know it's rather "common" but I noticed the sticker. I guess the sticker would have been there since 1980s - 227 rubles. Would be nice if you can buy it at that price right now! Anyone remembered if that was the price back then or it was released to the public a lot later during the early 1990s where coin collecting was encouraged? Pretty sure that is worth a lot of money back then... I remember vaguely of the discussion in here of people's income during those days as well as the exchange rates.

I think both of them looks good to me. Congradulations on the pattern coin - I had to fight bitterly for mine.

I personally find transitional coinage to be quite interesting. Why? Before I start, I think I might need to define what transitional coinage is as some people might have different ideas of what it is. I would define a transitional coinage as two different types of coins issued in the same year. Why this is interesting is because rather than waiting for the next design to be issued the next year, some urgent event may have prompted the need for the new coinage to appear faster than required. Some reasons are high metal prices, change of monarchy, inflation and so on. A good example is the 1982 penny where the composition was changed from copper to plated zinc in the same year rather than waiting it out to the next year. Here are some examples that I have: South Korea: 1970 5 and 10 won: Red copper Yellow copper During the late 1960s, copper prices have shot drastically that the Korean mint was forced to reconsider the amount of copper that was used in their coinage. 1 won was soon switched from 60% Cu, 40% Zn to 100% in 1968. As if this wasn't enough, an urgent change was done in 1970 where copper content was dropped from 88% to 65%. You can tell that the color of coins are different. This problem has reoccured later in 2006 where copper zinc coin still proved to be too expensive and it was replaced with copper plated aluminum coin. Malaysia In 1993, Malaysia decided to remove the dollar sign from the ringgit coin and replace it with the word "ringgit". This caused a lot of confusion with the public as they believed the latter version is a counterfeited. Confusion coupled with circulating counterfeited ringgit coins would eventually make this coin demonitized in 2005. China - Manchukuo There's more examples of this but I decided to show just a couple. In 1934, the reign has changed from Da Tong to Kang De Critical shortage of war metals have caused copper, nickel and even aluminum to be systemically removed from circulation. 1944 Aluminum 5 fen 1944 Red fiber 5 fen Would like to see what else you know or have.

Found this in a lot of kopek coins that I won recently. Pretty neat especially whne you have a die crack that goes across the entire coin.

Big eye opener - wow! Thanks for letting the rest of the world know Timofei. Figured there's unusually high amount of these UNC occupational coins appearing out of nowhere and the mystery is now solved. Thank you once again.

Apologies - taken a while to take photos. Here are some photos:

I wouldn' t recommend opening the set. It's just not worth it. It's worth more as a set as it is.

Back in the days when you have Dansco, Whitman making neat albums for foreign coins, there's something that they gambled. That is world coins would be popular and that they would make a profit. This was back in the 1960 - 70s. Bad timing - world coins were not too popular until the late 80 - 90s. Of course with any business that you run, you always need to ensure that you have enough demand to run your business otherwise you'll go kaput. Fair enough, very understandable. You see, I'm still awed over how impressive the old Dansco albums were made for foreign coins. I only have the Japan type set album and Fiji year set and these are very collectable even up to now. These albums I believe were made more than 40 years ago and they still look better than some of the modern albums out in the market. I believe Dansco will need to produce at least 1000 albums before they may consider reprinting an album. At let's say 40-50 dollars each, it's a fair amount of money. Not feasible unless you have researched your market throughly. What crossed my mind is when I read the article about printing 3D gun - appearently functional. Put the danger side away, why can't 3D printer be used to create customized coin albums? Have a few random ideas like the digital album I have created: Soviet type set http://gxseries.com/numis/rus_new_type/russia_1921_91_type_pg1_small.jpg Early 5 kopek year set http://gxseries.com/numis/rus_new_type/russia_5k_24_pg1_small.jpg South Korea type set http://gxseries.com/numis/koreatype/album/korea_1959_type_pg1_small.jpg Manchukuo year set http://gxseries.com/numis/china/album/manchukuo_pg3_small.jpg And the list goes on. Beauty of this is that you can change the language to any foreign language other than English and annotate whatever you like. Suppose the material used for printing is inert. Why not have an open source coin album design if this can be doable?

Thanks everyone for your kind comments. This hoard actually came from a few different sellers but it just happened that they arrived around the same time and I left them piled up for some time. Only got around to photographing them - a bit too busy for my liking. Will be sorting out the duplicates and sell them off. andwils, if you think this set is doable and affordable, I think you could be in for a bit of shock. I've come to realize that this is not an easy set to accomplish. The clay coins should be very easy - shouldn't cost more than 50 dollars in total if you are patient and aren't going for UNC condition. The key date 1943 1 jiao or 10 fen was worth at least 300 dollars back three years ago when the rest of the coins were averaging less than 5-10 dollars each in XF condition. I suspect it would have shot up at least two to three times now assuming if you can find one to start off with. Most 5 li coins are difficult to find. To give you a rough idea how difficult it was to find these two 5 li coins, it has been more than 2 years before I managed to track them down and obtain them. Saw a Kangde 3 5 li coin in average condition sold previously but it was going for than 70 dollars. Not too sure what is with the price for the 1933 1 fen but it is the first time I have seen it for offer. It's in a very good condition as well which makes it harder to find. Might be able to give you a hand with a few coins - will be sending a PM.

This is the last coin that I am looking for to complete the entire 1961 - 1991 50 kopek set. Doesn't include the various years variety on the edge and such. Quite annoying - I have managed to get hold of the key dates 1970, 1971, 1967, 1976 and so forth - only to be missing of this semi key date. I do have a tarnished 1975 mint set but am not keen to tear it apart just for this coin. Anyone lucky that has this coin in their collection?

Loyal Citizen, I factored in the red case mint set as well as the stamps. At this point of time when I checked ebay, yellow case outstrip red case by 5:1. Pretty certain those stamps are worth more than a few dollars. There are collectors that pay more for original packaging and I am one of them.

I think the price is reasonable to be honest. I would have bought it for that price.

Pretty certain this is worth a fair bit more than what many may think. Most mint sets come in yellow or green casing but red cases are made especially for export and to commemorate the Moscow Olympics. Not terribly rare but not common. I think I have one hiding somewhere in my hoard of coins. What scarcer is a red mint set issued in 1977. I'm pretty certain this can go over 200 dollars easily. The only problem is, you can only get the best price if you happen to have a collector that collects both coins and stamps and really understand the scarity of this. Most coin collectors only want the coins and stamp collectors only want the stamps. Basok has one for sale at 350 dollars - has been sitting on his website for sale for a while so that price might be on the higher side.

I was trying to remove duplicates in my collection to sell them off and found this interesting set. I realize I am a terrible hoarder and this has worked in my favor (not for my pockets though) Plain coin with nothing in the middle Filled die error with the word M"a"nchurian Provinces on the reverse - looks more like an inverted V. Flower in the middle Flower in the middle with dot First year of Hsuan Tung with Mongolian script in the middle First year of Hsuan Tung - note of the three stars on each side Manchurian Proviences - note: typo as well as completely different style of dragon Pretty impressive to have them side by side. Was quite stunned over what I have been hoarding over the years while paying tiny attention to varieties. Now off to see if I can remove other duplicates from my collection.