I thought that pickings were a little slim for individual city-states after the 1880's-90's. I thought that there were only a handful into the 20th century.
Hmm, I don't believe Prussia, Bavaria or Saxony are that difficult. Even Hamburg isn't to hard to find. Some of the Prussian 5m coins are very easy to find in high grade. I also like Prussian gold.
Depends one what grade you are looking for. The place for quality german coins is germancoins.com. It is run by Ron Guth, one of the leading experts on german coins. He has both a website and an EBay store.
Not really, sorry. When it comes to German coins, I primarily collect pieces from this country (Federal Republic of Germany), so Deutsches Reich coins ... well, I have a few. Also, since I am in Germany, I often buy from dealers here, locally or ma-shops.com - don't know what a good source in the US would be. Now sakata mentioned one ... Christian
I collect German States from Medieval to 1918. Sixbid lists all the auctions that have these. Kunker is excellent for high quality coins/ Heritage also has a good selection of German States. John
If you are looking for German States post 1901, then you are really talking about the silver 2, 3, & 5 Mark coins, or the gold 5, 10, 20 Mark coins. Here is a general rule of thumb (mostly for silver): Prussian silver is by far the easiest and most plentiful. The "regular" 3 mark coins are all quite common, but actually hard to find in really nice (MS-64 or better) grades. There are a few key dates, but only the Mansfeld 3 Mark is difficult to get (and even that one is just expensive but you can almost always find somebody with one for sale somewhere). Bavaria and Wurttemberg are probably the next most common, with Saxony, Baden, and Hamburg just a tick lower. As always, there are some keys, but most of these are regularly available in circulated grades. After that, you start looking at the smaller states or free cities where any of the coins are going to cost upwards of $100 in even average collectible states (roughly speaking). Bremen, Lubeck, the various minor "Saxe-[something]" states, Hesse-Darmstadt, etc. all fall here. Of course, some of the coins from the remaining states are almost unattainable and only end up in the accumulations of truly deep-pocketed collectors.
