I recently bought a handful of foreign coins at spot (love the 'silver junk' bin at my local coin shop). One of them was a 35mm silver Bar Mitzvah Medal issued by the state of Israel: http://www.theshekel.org/article_barmitzva_medal.html I'm trying to find out the composition, mintage numbers, and value for one of these in AU/MS64, but am not seeing it listed in Krause. Any suggestions of where it is cataloged? Beautiful medal (or coin... depending on your definition). I can see why they were re-released in a larger size to meet popular demand.
So, there were only about 10,000 of these minted in 1961? A bit rarer than I expected. I'll have to examine it closely and see if I can ID the mint tomorrow. Thank you!
Oh, come on. There are more than 5M Jewish residents of Israel alone: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/is.html Worldwide, there are probably what, 10-15M people claiming Jewish descent (with roughly half of them celebrating a bar mitzvah)? I don't know what I was expecting in terms of mintage numbers, but 10,000 is a rounding error for most modern commemorative coins. Island nations like Bermuda (or semi-nations like Somalia) put out more than that in a single year of mintage.
