gxseries

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.

Went on a rampage to buy a hoard of Manchukuo coins - they seem to be drying up quite quickly. There is probably more than 100 coins in this lot. This did not come cheaply but found some key dates and upgrades in here. While catalog value seems to suggest otherwise, I have been looking for these coins for at least a couple of years.

5 li coins - this is dated 1933

1936

The most common 5 li coins are 1934 (Da Tong 3 and Kang De 1) and 1937 (Year 4). Other years are significantly difficult. Probably paid a few times more than the suggested catalog value.

New type 1943 5 fen

This coin is surprisingly difficult to find despite what catalog value suggest. This coin is actually harshly cleaned but I know that if I miss this opportunity, I will not see another one any time soon. Both the new and old 5 fen coin was difficult to find but this I reckon is a lot harder than the old type.

I have about 4 coins left to find in this series but they all pose serious challenges.

1 fen copper: 1933 - despite what all catalog value say, I have not seen one for sale.

10 fen / 1 jiao aluminum old type: 1943 - this is the most expensive key date

5 li copper: 1935, 1939. Now I reckon these two could be as hard as the key date especially the 1939 5 li.

I would like to know what the edge looks like.

Have no opinion but altering this could be a lot harder - the date is indented so unless parts of the zero has been filled in, I think it's quite difficult.

Yes, the denomination is "fun" and it's fun to find when something like this pops up.

This coin is a Korean 1902 5 fun.

I wasn't really looking seriously and by chance saw this for sale. It wasn't too terribly expensive and I thought what do I have to lose.

For some reason I thought it looked different from mine and sure enough, what got me is the font thickness difference in the character "6" for "kwangmu 6th year". It's on the lower right leg.

Turns out the original one that I had could be scarcer than I could have thought of.

BUT

As you might guess, this coin has an interesting rotation error. Rotation error of up to 15 degrees is common but this is pretty unusual.

I guess the moral of the story is, just because it's crusty and low grade doesn't necessary mean that it's worthless. You might find something unusual while you are at it.

Apologies, must be a mental typo slip there. Will fix it now.

Saw this coin on offer and the price wasn't that expensive. On top of that, this is a very unusual design - I got bitten by it.



No state emblem - and I like the details.

Can you please take a photo directly on top, not from an angle?

One of Uzdenikov's catalog mentioned that ducats were overstruck over Dutch coin. Here's a list of them.

http://http://gxseries.com/numis/rus_imperial/overstrike/rus_overstruck.htm

I'll send a message to the seller with my concerns.

It's definitely not a country as touristic like Western Europe. Just have to watch it in April where you have ugly thugs walking around - was bashed in the middle of street bright daylight. But again this is more than 10 years ago so things would have changed drastically. This is when you have 10 ruble notes still circulating and bimetal coins were starting to appear. 5 ruble notes were uncommon.

On the hindsight, if you know where to look, it can be a big eye opener. Yaroslavl and St Petersburg are good examples. Moscow metro is equally impressive.

That said Sigi, was a lot of the 10 ruble coins bimetal or the plated commemorative coins? Heard the bimetal coins disappeared quite quickly.

I thought the weight is a bit lower than specs. Not sure what the average weight of this particular ruble is supposed to be like.

Won this ruble recently. Certain that it's genuine but there's something that I can't quite pin down on.

Weight: 23.14g.

There is another variety for 1974 mint set. If they are issued in plastic sheet instead of the hard plastic case, they are worth more.

This is an example

Bought this recently and found it intriguing.

Here's more information: http://suite101.com/article/holocaust-money-of-the-lodz-ghetto-a311179

When I picked up this coin, I thought it looks like it was in a fire. Maybe it was really used to generate some heat? Certain that this is a genuine coin.

At one stage when they were first released, they weren't worth a lot. Probably about 100 dollars or so less back then. Now they are about 300+ dollars because 1, 2 and 5 rubles coins were only released in mintsets. Mintage of these coins are estimated about 15,000 each for both types.

Managed to get hold of the St Petersburg set - missed the opportunity to win the Moscow mint set as the asking price closer to 400 dollars.

Will post the photo when I get to it.

Extant4cell - the coins that came in the original GOZNAK paper pocket were struck in UNC condition, not PROOF condition. Proof conditions are quite scarce and were only released in limited amount.

Bought a couple of interesting copper coins and these just arrived. Quite neat.

Not a particularly rare coin but I found this year rather difficult to find for some reason.

Now this I think is a rather underrated coin. No mintmark 1788 1 kopek. This is overstruck over 1762 2 kopek.

Underlaying image.

Found something interesting recently? Please feel free to show.

There are counterfeits known. I was stung by it a while ago. You must check the edge of it as well as the weight of the coin before making any decision on buying it.