My daughter brought home some coins for me from Tanzania. She was there on a nursing volunteer thing. Not in great condition but she said these were the best she could find in change. I thought it was a wonderful gesture. Anybody else get coins?
Cool! I lived in Tanzania when I was a kid, in 1972. I would not have encountered one of your coin's type, obviously. For that reason, when I found this coin in a bulk lot, I spent $40+ to slab it and add it to my primary collection, even though it's only got a catalog value of $3 or so as of the last time I checked. It is now unsurprisingly the top pop example, because nobody else has bothered to submit one. So it will likely rule the roost in the PCGS population for the foreseeable future. I used to get one of these for my first weekly allowance, if I had been a good boy. I recall buying a model airplane kit with one of them.
I suppose their economy was different in 1972 as far as value of 5 shillings. My daughter gave me a 500, 200 and 100 shilling, and the total is currently worth about 33 US cents.
Must’ve been. But when I said I recalled buying a plastic model airplane kit with a 5-shilingi coin like the one above, that’s the recollection of a six year old. The model kit might’ve cost more, and Dear Old Dad might’ve chipped in the rest for me. But yeah- 5 shilingi in 1972 seems obviously worth as much if not more than 100x that amount in modern times. Rampant inflation, I guess.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/TZA/tanzania/inflation-rate-cpi I found this showing inflation 20-36% per year from 1980-1996. Over 16 years that's a lot. I couldn't find exchange rate history going back that far.
