A History of South Korean "Won" coins (1966-present)

Okay I can more then likely send a photo later on today. When you say a couple of dollar can you give me an estimate of a "couple of dollars"

 

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By the way this coin is in very good shape.

 

My 1966 Korea 5 won is in good condition.

 

Does your coin look like the one in this link?
5-Won-1966

I am sure someone can help you, but its almost impossible without pictures of your coins.

 

It looks exactly like this in perfect shape except it says 1966.

 

That is one of my coin photos. As mentioned, it has to be a photo of your coin. If it's indeed similar to the condition shown, it's worth up to a couple of dollars tops.

 

This is my coin, so what is the estimate value for this coin?

 

I reckon it is around 5 - 10 dollars. Can't see it going too much higher.

 

Why is that?

 

Actually, gxseries is being kind.

I'm not sure that you could sell it for $10. Also: Just seeing you place it in the palm of your hands is more the reason why I wouldn't pay even $5.

South Korean coins, for most of us who collect them, only really hold higher value if they are in uncirculated or gem condition. Sellers on eBay and elsewhere think that these coins have some value if they are just a little worn or brown, as if they were some U.S. coin, like an early 1900s Lincoln Cent. That's just not true, mostly.

These coins seem to sell at either very high prices for pristine coins, or very low prices for anything below "pristine". Nothing in the middle. I prefer to buy as pristine examples as I can.

 

How do you "find" what you can? Is there a dealer(s) you trust?
Thanks

 

I filled out most of my collection around 10 years ago from a dealer who had an online store that was open to us non-Koreans and PayPal called "koreancoins.com". It is now defunct, but it was the source of all of my non-key date, low Krause catalog price South Korean coins, but coins that were still the impossible-to-find-outside-of-Korea kind with mid-1970s to 1982 dates. Especially the 50-Won, 10-Won, Five-Won, and One-Won coins. He was selling them for peanuts, not knowing (probably) just how hard it is (was?) to find such coins in North America. Otherwise, he would have jacked up his asking prices; I especially think this is the case since his key-date pieces and mint sets in crappy condition were astronomically priced.

In other words, I just got lucky.

Since that time, I've established a purchasing relationship (via PayPal) with Mr. Kim Jung-sik of the online South Korean retailer, Sujipbank.com. His prices are not the lowest, but he has the most consistently decent-quality coin inventory of any Korean online seller; and what you see at his site is what you get, and that's definitely a feather in his cap. I have also purchased from sujipmol.com, G-market.co.kr (South Korea's eBay), narauction.com, mirinemall.co.kr and powercoin.co.kr; but I've had to use Korea-based friends to purchase from these sites, since they only take funds drawn from Korea-linked bank accounts. In fact, I cannot even access narauction from the internet here in the States. I have to ask a friend to take screen shots of the site's pages and have him purchase things for me using his own Korean-based money (which I reimburse of course). I've only done this several times. The Korean numismatic market is pretty hard to access, and rather closed-circuit for some reason. Probably as an effort to keep foreigners out, and prices in South Korea high.

I have not really actively collected S. Korean coins for a while now, I just mostly write about them nowadays.

Most of my own key-date, Gem-condition pieces were purchased at eBay and at coin shows, actually. The problem is, nowadays you just don't see such coins offered for sale on eBay very often for some reason. The coin shows in my area, well, I drained the frequently-attending dealers of all of their really nice S. Korean coins long ago, and they don't seem too interested in replenishing their stocks of those coins very often.

Long story short:
The best way to "trust a dealer" is to know your coin series better than the dealer who is selling the coin to you, and to see the coin being offered in-hand. Knowing my series and cherrypicking dealers has NEVER been a problem in the past, but it is getting harder because dealers are starting to get wise to the popularity of S. Korean coins and their hike in asking prices.

 

I used to go through a lot of poundage and odd ball stuff would just leap out at me. Then I looked at a great deal of dealer stock in my travels and at coin shows and compared that to what I saw in poundage.

Most moderns can be found in substantial numbers but in many cases they can be found only in highly worn or degraded condition. Indian coins for example were made in huge numbers but pristine examples are scarce to relatively uncommon. Pristine and well made coins are often scarce. Most of the Korean coins aren't especially common here.

Some coins are likely much more common in their countries of issue but this probably doesn't apply to Korea and almost certainly not to India. Some countries actively discouraged coin collecting in modern times like East Germany and the Soviet Union.

Until people actually start collecting moderns it's impossible to know what's really rare or what's just rare to me. But a lot of these coins were simply never set side and I never found even a single example.

 

I used to work with a Swiss dealer who had all sorts of never seen stuff. Most of the modern Swiss isn't really rare but it is hard to put your hands on. He got a lot of his coins from broken mint sets and these all had low mintages.

 

Sometimes some of the best high quality coins can be found overseas as business men or missionaries brought back banknotes and coins. This would mean they are pretty much retired from circulation in decent condition. Mind you, this is back in the era where traveling overseas was difficult due to visa restrictions, plane tickets were expensive - it was essentially a privilege to travel abroad. Some of the best quality Asian numismatics survived this way - a lot ended up in Europe, US and Japan.

So maybe it doesn't hurt to check your coin dealer's junk box - make sure you know what you are looking for!

 

Junk boxes are great!!

I've actually seen dealers cutting up rare mint sets like the '71 Soviet set to put in the junk box. It's isn't at all unusual to see nice chBU coins that are rarely seen in these. Frequently they're still BU when you find them but by the time they hit poundage they are almost always a little worn.

 

A great number of dealers just don't want to "mess" with moderns. Many of them will still put BU rolls of things like 1983 quarters in the till without bothering to look them up. Foreign coins go in a bucket or a junk box if they're later date coins. Most dealers would rather not buy this stuff at all but they know if they don't buy everything an heir brings in they might get nothing so they include the moderns in their offer at a ridiculously low price. If they have no regular buyers then it just gets 'distributed". Frequently coin shops have no regular buyers for moderns.

Most of the modern market takes place on-line and at higher prices than Krause. Just try to buy something like nice Irish decimals at Krause!

 

I'd like to see your junk coin box! At one stage, even copper coins were removed from some of my coin dealer boxes when copper prices were high. Obviously silver coins aren't in those lots. You can only guess what kind of junk was truly there...

 

I got started with moderns back in '75 looking for silver in junk boxes. There was quite bit in those days and the Krause catalog was new so I just tried to memorize all the world silver coins. But I noticed after a few years I was learning a lot about the base metal coins as I was searching so I started paying more attention to them. The first base metal coins I identified as being scarce in Unc were the '50's era Greek coinage. Now days these sell for hundreds of dollars in many instances, but in those days they were mere junk box and poundage coins. These were even tough in XF and AU.

 

http://www.dokdo-research.com/bankofkoreamintsets.html

I'm really impressed by these articles.

I should have paid more attention to the South Korean coins over the years. The sets weren't often seen and when they were they were "fully priced" most of the time.