Mystery

I'd like to start by saying that I've never been a coin collecter, other than the "toss an odd foreign coin in a drawer" type. I've never really come across many foreign coins, other than the Canadian stuff, in my day to day life. I'm cleaning out closets at my parents' house in preparation for a move, going through all of the toys I had as a child and such, and I came across a box of coins that has been in the back of a closet, untouched, since the late 1980s when my parents put it there.

I started looking through the box, and while I know how some of the coins got here, some are mysteries. My family isn't close and I don't know very much specific family history although I know general information about most of my family and can more or less place them at any given time in history, so my interest is more to that end. I will say that my family are not world travelers, nor do they know any, so that they'd have this many foreign coins seems odd to me. To give you an idea, one side of my family are Alabama farmers and lived in rural Alabama their entire lives, and the other side is from Europe but have been mining coal in Pennsylvania for most of the last century.

A few of these coins are in cardboard sleeves, which indicates that someone in the family was a collector, but most of them are loose. I suspect that coins were added to the box by different people throughout the decades. I don't know of any family member that was a rabid coin collector and I doubt anyone was too seriously into it as I don't think any of these are very valuable.

Here is a list of the mystery coins (or as best as I can do). If anyone can tell me how common they were or if you can point me to a guide, I'd appreciate it. I don't really care about prices since I'm not selling any, but how common these would be for the average American to come across in the time period between, say 1930 and 1985.

I suspect these came from various grandfathers and their brothers who fought in the big war. I can't place any single family member to all of these countries, but I think they are contributions from several different family members who I know were in the general area during the time period. Among all of them, they could have acquired all of these coins.

A French Franc from 1943
A couple of Irish coins from 1940
A UK penny dated 1940

A Danzig Free State Pfennig dated 1932
Austrian coin dated 1933
A bunch of Spanish coins with Franco's portrait on them and a Spanish coin dated 1944
Netherlands coins dated 1940-1943
Various coins with portraits of Hitler on them

As far as I know, no member of my family has ever been to an Eastern Bloc country, and while these may be common now, I don't think they were before 1989 (which was the last time the box was touched):

Yugoslavian coins dated in the early 1950s
Czechoslovakian coins dated in the early 1960s and late 1950s

No one in my family has ever been to Africa or India, although since there are only a couple of these, they could have come from anywhere:

A Cuban coin dated 1920
Indian coins dated 1956 and 1957
A half-cent from Sierra Leone dated 1964

No one in my family has ever been to the Middle East:

Kuwaiti coins, date unreadable by me
A couple of what look to be Israeli coins
A coin from The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan


The biggest mystery is the origin of the Eastern Bloc coins and the Middle Eastern coins. No one I know of has ever traveled to either of those regions, but from the number of coins I have, these were fairly substantial trips. Also, I'm not sure how many people traveled to Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia at all during that time frame.

Thanks for any help or pointers to any guides that you can give me.

Safe Cracker

Hello Mystery,

I can only speak from my own travels through the desert back in 1988 when I belonged to Uncle Sam. If the coin is from an OIL PRODUCING nation, keep it. Just on face value alone it is worth more than you think. I visited Oman and their currency (then) was worth about 3.5 to 1 so it was hard on us Sailors.

As I look over your list, most of the Countries you list are or were Communist back then. This makes the value a bit higher as the USSR has disbanned. (This is my oppinion here, as I'm not sure about this) Again, hang onto those.

The only European Country I've visited is Italy. The Italian currancy is worth far less 1-to-1 than the Dollar. It's amazing how many Lire you get for $150. LOL Somewhere near 200K.

That's what I would do with your box of coins. Simply hang onto them as their value has only one way to go, and that's up.

Roger

Bluegill

It is very difficult to speak to a coin't rarity and value when one does not have specifics; is there any way you can post some photos?

Regarding the mystery of how these coins got into your family, you may never figure it out, but it wouldn’t seem very odd to me. People accumulate that kind of stuff without even trying, and even more if they have a slight interest in it, which seems to be the case here (judging from the cardboard holders some of the coins were in.)

I’ve found odd world coins in the change drawer at work, in a pencil cup at church, on the sidewalk. Friends and coworkers have given them to me. I have lots from when I was little; my next door neighbor went to Europe and brought envelopes full of change for my brother and me. I’ve bought lots at the flea market, 2 for 25 cents, including a Vichy France franc from the early 1940s, just like yours.

And remember, just because a coin has a certain date, it doesn’t mean that’s when someone traveled to the country. The Czech and Yugoslavian coins could have been obtained any time in the past forty + years. In that time, millions of people, including many from the U.S., came and went from those countries.

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satootoko

to CoinTalk Mystery.

You've really asked two questions, of which the forum members who don't have working crystal balls can only answer one.

What your coins are, including value estimates, is the easy question, once you post photos or scans so that members can evaluate the state of preservation.

How your coins were accumulated, on the other hand, is a questions for a fortuneteller, not a numismatist.

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Roy

willieboyd2

This sounds like one of those 1940's movies where the guy wakes up and can't remember where he has been for the past three years but finds odd foreign coins in his pockets.

Bonedigger

?????? But Welcome and Greetings anyway

Bone

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gxseries

You know, you don't need to be in a particular cointry to get such coins. All you need is some friends to be there for a holiday or so and get it back as changes. These days, you are more likely to find out in circulation by some careless tourists

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chrisild

Only the one that Italy used before 1999/2002.

Christian

Safe Cracker

Christian, you may very well be correct. I was there in 1988, so if they went to the Euro, or something based on that, I wouldn't know. All I know is, (back then, $125 bought over 200K Lire.) Man, what a party we had. Litterally bought a bar for the night. I just am greatfull I wasn't working the next day.

Safe Cracker

chrisild

Seems you had a good time in Rome.

As for the pieces mentioned in the initial message, "Various coins with portraits of Hitler on them" ... those are probably medals. Nazi Germany issued a bunch of stamps with Hitler's portrait, and various medals, but no coins.

Christian

bruce 1947

Welcome to our forum glad to have you.

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Troodon

I have quite a collection of world coins just from coins mistakenly circulated into the US, lol... mostly Canada of course, but have found coins from Bahamas, Mexico, Switzerland, Singapore, Sweden, Malaysia, and East Caribbean States in circulation in the US, just to name a few. Any world coin that is reasonably close in size to a US coin has a good chance of somehow making into circulation here.

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Mystery

I suppose with thousands or millions of these coins minted, some are bound to find their way about. You're right that most of these can probably be explained in that way.

I'll have to look at the German "coins" again; they might be medals or something along those lines.

I went through the family photos and papers last night. Unfortunately, I don't have many people left to ask about this, but I did find a few pictures and letters that offered some explanation.

Most of the European coins probably came from various family members who were overseas. I can place people in most of the countries, and given the size of Europe, it's not a stretch that coins could cross borders.

I have about 40 or so Franco coins, but I can place someone in Spain around that time, so I suspect they came here via him.

The 30 or so Czech and Yugo coins are a mystery still, since they were acquired sometime between 1963 and 1986. Because of the number of them, I don't think they were picked up at random. I just don't think they were common enough for that in the West, although I could be wrong.

Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia weren't exactly popular tourist destinations for Americans during the height of the Cold War either. I can't think of anyone in my family that would want to or be allowed to visit those countries during that time period. I suppose it could be from a purchase at a German coin shop or something along those lines.

One of my relatives did spend some time in Egypt, so the coins from the Middle East either came from him or were random pickups. There aren't too many of them, anyway.

Thanks for the help. My questions were a little random, and any answers I'll get aren't going to come from the coins themselves.

kuhli

Quite to the contrary. Yugoslavia went through a couple of changes in politics which included a name change from the Democratic Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1946-1963 to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1963-1992 (although they were a Communist government, they were not aligned with Moscow, nor were they part of the Warsaw Pact. they made individual accords with Russia and other eastern nations as well as with the US and other western nations). With the name change came a whole new series of coins, dated 1963, and the withdrawl of the 1953/55 series. These coins, many of which had never left bank vaults during the 10 years they were legal tender, became fodder for western uses. Littleton, H.E. Harris, and other coin companies bought them en-mass for "approval" issues to customers (you can still find them in dealers' stocks or eBay, still in the Littleton envelopes). They were used in various "collecting" programs, such as the world-wide coins program sponsored by Typhoo Tea in the UK (a card stock similar to a Whitman folder that housed a dozen or so worldwide coins, with tidbit information about each country; you collected the coins in "specially marked packages"). They were also used as cereal "premiums". (I believe it was a Post cereal in the US, perhaps "Honeycombs"?, but I cannot remember definitively.) If memory serves correct, McDonalds' even used some in a promotion during the early 1980's, part of a give-away with purchase of a certain new product. I do remember that there were also a few Central American coins in this promotion, as well.

Mystery

Interesting. I had no idea about any of that. Did something similar happen with Czech coins? I think they went through a few governmental changes also (changing to a socialist republic in the 1960s), but they were much more closely aligned with Moscow than Yugoslavia.