gxseries

I'm certain it's one of those fantasy tokens based on genuine pattern coinage.

Thanks for your kind words thedeadpoint.

I guess to answer your first question - there's sites that kinda already do it but it's doable. For instance numista.com, omnicoin.com. Of course they aren't very customized.

Second question - if there's demand, yes I can always do it. Anything can be done with any world coins, US, Canadian, German, French, Italian, Chinese etc. You name it. I can even be very selective and pick the era, type, etc. It could be just US copper type set, nickel, silver - you name it!

My bad - didn't realize the link did not work, thedeadpoint. Thanks for letting me know.

It's fixed now!

This is one of the projects that had to be done by this year for a good reason. Some may have been reading the news and it's history. It is Hong Kong 20th anniversary hand over to China. Hong Kong used to be under the British rule from 1841 to 1997. During this time, Hong Kong was home to various foreign coinage as Hong Kong was a vital trading port. A new mint was established and opened in 1866. This only lasted for two years as the public perception of such coins was deemed to be poor. Ironically the same equipment that was sold off to Osaka Mint was more successful a couple years later. Coins later were struck in England. Various coins were struck with the English Monarch and eventually Queen Elizabeth's portrait had to go. Some of the latest Hong Kong coins are interesting as they come in scallop shape.

With such interesting history - there's no reason why you can't be tempted in a type set in this. Dansco actually has made one about 50 years ago and it needed an update really badly. Plus I didn't quite agree with the overall presentation. Just missing one coin but it's good enough for me.

Presenting you the latest digital Hong Kong type set album: https://issuu.com/gxseries/docs/hong_kong_type_album_1863_present

This as usual proved to be harder than expected for the following reason (I'll leave the key dates last)

1) Timeline of Hong Kong coinage. Some denominations do overlap in odd eras. I personally found the 1890 - 1894 50 cents, 1982 - 1984 10 cents, 1980 - 1984 5 dollars to be out of line.

2) 1931 to 1941 must have been a chaotic time. Many different type of coins, not including the rare 1941 1 cent coin

3) Photoshop wise... try to do a decagon shape or a scallop shape. Not fun cropping.

4) Lastly - of course finding the coins. Mind you - I've tried hard to obtain them at a reasonable cost. Most of them are actually very affordable with the exception of the silver 50 cents and the large silver dollar coin. I was lucky to obtain a fair number of them including the Dansco type set album a while back.

On the topic of rarity according to my opinion / experience (excluding 1941 1 cent)

1) 1866 - 1868 1/2 dollar: Total mintage figure at just mere 59,000 (!!!)

2) 1866 - 1868 1 dollar

3) 1902 - 1905 20 cents. Strangely while mintage figures seem to be reasonably high, this coin rarely appear in the market. In fact, it's much harder to find compared to the 1866 - 1868 dollar coins. Why?

4) 1935 5 cents. Mintage figure does not seem to make this rare but it's unusually hard to find.

The rest are a lot easier to find.

Now if you ask me what my favorite Hong Kong coin is, it would be the scallop 2 dollar coin. This is one of the first Hong Kong coins that I believe I got from my dad from a business trip that I remembered vividly along with the 20 cents coin. I liked the thick 5 dollar and the bi metal 10 dollar but ultimate it's the shape that fancied me as a kid. My good friend also gave me one a while back.

Please feel free to post your Hong Kong coins! I predict there will be a large surge in search on ebay for Hong Kong coins the next few weeks...

Very nice photos! Thanks for sharing! As I'm a fan of overstruck coins - these are an eye treat!

Sigi, I believe 1810 SPB 2 kopek is actually not too common. In fact I have been looking for it for a while (passively) and it has somehow managed to escaped my hands. Understandably it is in low grade but I'm certain I'm happy to pay more than 10 dollars for it. Another underrated 2 kopek is the 1830 EM 2 kopek which I am still on the look out.

Was tidying up my collection and this is one set that I got a few years back. I did show it once before but wanted to do a formal digital coin album set.

A brief summary of the Chinese poem coins is that the coins were cast around 1660 - 1680s by 20 different mints in different provinces. The coins were rearranged to form poetry. As far as I understand, there does not seem to be any meaning to it but may be rearranged by phonetic.

The way I have designed is that I wanted to include both the pinyin and English pronunciation as well as traditional and simplified Chinese characters. It kinda looks cluttered but to put so much information in - it was not straight forward. As of why I wanted to do so, I honestly struggled to read different references with different annotations. Therefore this has to be done.

Enough said and enjoy the view!

http://gxseries.com/ct/poem1_small.jpg

http://gxseries.com/ct/poem2_small.jpg

Please feel free to post your pictures as well.

Aw man it's a real shame! Sadly regardless of how professional a jeweler may be, there will always be signs of the mount. It's essentially metal to metal bonding so it's impossible to hide signs of it.

I really don't know how to go about this. Because of it's condition, it might be better for the mount to be removed for the sake of numismatics. I am certain there will always be someone on ebay willing to buy it but it comes down to how much.

Hello extent4cell, very interesting information indeed.  Simply put, it just seems that SM mint could not meet the target. With SPM mint figure in total, it met close to the 1 million ruble mark.

My first impression is that cannon metal is harder than normal copper alloy. I am under the impression that the Swedish copper coins was made of softer alloy and hence left less traces of the overstruck impression. (XRF tests one day for future numismatics?). Perhaps in 1764, SM mint managed to get their hands on fresh planchets from cannon metal? Maybe that's why it was also classified as "overstrike"? Also made me wonder where they received their Swedish coins. Maybe spoils from Russo Swedish war in 1741 - 1743? Or Swedish copper coins actually did circulate back then like how New Zealand coins circulate in Australia?

Very interesting, thank you for translating the document extent4cell. Wish my command of Russian is better.

I've worked out some figures and you might be intrigued:

In 1757, if you look at the mintage figures of 1 kopek, 1/2 kopek and polushka - about 800 rubles of each denomination were struck. Quite unusual.

Total ruble denomination minted as follows:

1757 - 124 029 ruble, 55 kopek (excluding the 252388 ruble error from Moscow Mint)

1758 - 161 196 ruble, 70 kopek

1762 - 151 457 ruble, 40 kopek

1763 - 142 564 ruble, 00 kopek

1764 - No info

1765 - 33 128 ruble, 00 kopek

1766 - 9 992 ruble, 35 kopek

1767 - No info

The total so far is 616 368 ruble, not including the figures from 1764 and 1767. I find it hard to believe that in 1764 and 1767, a total of 383 632 rubles were struck considering that 1763 is the most common and 1767 is quite uncommon to scarce. Who knows if the Moscow Mint "252388 ruble" is to cover up mintage issues. This way, SM mint would only have to account for 131,244 rubles for 1764 and 1767 which seems more realistic. Of course, this is based on the assumption that SM mint did struck 1,000,000 ruble worth as required.

Another problem that I find it hard to believe is that Uzdenikov mentioned that all copper coins from 1762 to 1767 were overstruck. I have seen examples of 1762 and 1763 however it seems that Sestroretsk Mint must have somehow got their hands on manufacturing fresh planchets or importing them from somewhere as it seems no overstruck examples can be found from 1764 onwards. There were a few discussions about this a while back.

Onto a wild speculation here - could this be a reason why Sestroretsk mint was allowed to experiment with copper ruble to cover up their mistakes in 1771? Or is there another decree for this?

Extant4cell - can you please give me more details of the translation where possible.I understand the total sum is around 5 million rubles but where did this figure of 1 million ruble for SM mint come about? Also this 5 million figure - does this mean that by 1757, a total of 5 million ruble is to be struck? Does this include the transitional coinage of the Baroque kopek?

My first impression of SM mint is that it is never meant to be a permanent mint - it was a temporary setup to relieve pressure off St. Petersburg mint as it's main purpose is an armory. St. Petersburg looked like it was already too busy striking coins in both gold and silver. It cannot be a coincidence as St. Petersburg started to strike / overstrike copper coins from 1755 and stopped in 1759, only to resume in 1762 - similar story with Sestroretsk mint. Perhaps the decree wanted to encourage Moscow and Ekaterinaburg to pick up striking copper coins, relieving pressure off St. Petersburg mint.

Sometimes you need to pass and kick the ball to have an interesting show. I'm glad this sparked an interesting discussion and this finally solved a 250+ old mystery. Well done extant4cell!

Sorry guys, have been away for a while. Seems like I missed out on a bit.

I'm also curious to know what happened to this. 5 million coins is not something that someone cold have made an error on. At the same time, I thought it could have been possible that it is a combined mintage of 2 and 1 kopek but this is unlikely either.

This information is from Uzdenikov.

1757: 5 kopek - 5 047 760; 2 kopek - 6 080 810; 1 kopek - 80 470; denga - 160 800; polushka: 321 860

1758: 5 kopek - 28 698; 2 kopek: - 6426 090; 1 kopek - 3 424 000

Therefore I think it's very unlikely that the 1757 5 kopek mintage figure is a sum of the smaller denomination. Instead I believe that 5 million coins were indeed struck but most likely of an unapproved design. These coins were immediately recalled and melted down or overstruck.Understandably, if this is indeed the case, there does not seem to be any record or survivors. This someone reminds me of the survival rate of the 1724 kopek

For me, counterfeits have been a serious issue. I've got stung a couple of times but this time was the worst - I returned a couple to the same seller and he claimed that he didn't receive the last one. Ebay didn't side on me on this time and I lost out. Needless to say that has put me off completely.

Been quiet for a while and I've sorted some coins in my collection. Manchukuo coins have been somewhat underrated and prices have been steadily on the rise. Thankfully I've completed the set a while back but it still doesn't stop me from looking out for something interesting or different.

Krause mentions that there is a variety for the 5 fen coin. I was skeptical until I went through a fair number of them to find it.

This is a normal 5 fen coin of the same year (1936 5 fen)



The next one is described as a wide rim - which should look quite obvious



Now I would like to present a normal 1933 5 fen. (This is somewhat very underrated)



And this is one that I found recently.



If you look at the reverse, it seems that the rims are a lot narrower to any of the examples shown earlier. I personally think this is a new variety however have not seen any other examples yet.

What do you think?

Quite neat!

This is my couple. Not the nicest but they look quite different

Seems like a legend is around the eagle

A pegasus horse

All my other overstrikes aren't as that neat. I think there might have been a post which feature quite neat overstrikes.

I returned the first coin. Took a lot of effort to convince this cannot be genuine. Guess what? The seller still continues to offer it.

There was another coin that had me interested. This looked like it had to potential to be struck on the 1992 100 ruble planchet. I decided to see it in hand

Weight wise for all the coins used

1991 10 ruble (normal) : 6.02g

1991 10 ruble (plated silver?): 5.91g

1992 50 ruble: 5.91g

1991 10 ruble (switched alloy?): 6.08g

You can see that the weight test is not reliable as the weight of these coins have a huge variance.

The surface just does not look right. At best, it looks like it is heavily cleaned. But the color and toning does not look right! Gold just looks too bright for brass and nickel copper just does not tone in such a funny color. Lastly the dot is something that just cannot happen unless it's plated.

Honestly I'm that tempted to put a scratch through the coin to demonstrate that it has been altered but I'm not too keen on throwing my money out. I've lost on shipping but this helps me keep in touch of the modern counterfeit / altered coins sellers would try to push through.

Your opinion?

The overall patina looks consistent with the modern super counterfeits that have been appearing in the market in the last 5 years especially on ebay.

I was hunting this for quite a while. This particular coin only affects Denmark 1812 12 skilling which is overstruck over 1771 1 skilling.



You can see the number "1771" right above the King's head. I unfortunately do not have a 1771 1 skilling photo to compare with - google images do have some examples.

As of why 1771 1 skilling was chosen, I have no idea. Perhaps this was the only copper coin available? Many coins prior to this were struck in cheap silver billion. Also do note - this coin seems to be cut down / shaved from the original coin! Perhaps when it was overstruck, it became enlarged and had to cut down to shape. This does have an interesting edge as well.

Would be interested to know more about this history!

More world overstruck coins can be seen here:
http://gxseries.com/numis/overstrike/world_overstrike.htm

Went and got this off ebay. This was described as a white metal error coin. The original coin is a bi-metal coin.

Some pictures







I did some weight test comparison but it seems to be within weight tolerance of all the other similar 10 ruble coin that I have. The edge is to show the color difference sandwiched between two genuine coin.

My question is, do you think this is a plated coin or a genuine wrong planchet error coin.

I guess this is where I'm puzzled - if this is indeed novodel, wouldn't Chapsky or Lisenko wanted one in their collection? I would be puzzled if they didn't want high quality TM coins in their collection. I'm certain they would not have missed this opportunity. I could be wrong...

Hello, I've missed a bit of discussion - been away for a while

I guess while it's easy to say they are novodel just from the appearance - I do have reservation against it.

Firstly, regardless whether they are novodel or pattern coins and if I am not wrong, this has not been documented for more than 200 years! This is assuming they are genuine "coins". I do have to ask this question - could any rich collectors back in those days write to St. Petersburg mint and ask for any coins to be "restruck" or there was some kind of catalog? If there is one - I am interested to see it!

To me, the year 1786 raises questions. Crimea was annexed by Russia in 1783 and the mint officially opened in 1787. A key important event occurred when Catherine II made her visit to Crimea in 1787. I would not be surprised that very few trial pieces were struck before the mint opened in 1787. Now if this is indeed novodel, why 1786 instead of 1787 or 1788? I can't quite seem to make any sense yet.

Mihaizaha - do you have a better higher quality photo as well as a photo of the edge? Something doesn't seem right - it could be possible that it has been treated with some chemicals / cleaned previously.

The later Soviet era coins were struck of aluminum bronze. As no one has really investigated how Moscow and Leningrad mint struck their coins - this might be an interesting discovery. It might be possible that some coins were plated copper and then moved to aluminum bronze alloy.

There are some counterfeits where key dates are involved. The silver coins seem genuine as discussed in other forum.

A rough estimate for the 1974 mint set would be around 80 - 100 USD mark. 1974 15 and 20 kopek are semi key dates. There might be some scarce variety which may raise the value.