Lower mintage island country coins MUST be appreciated!

Well, I have a feeling that collectors aren't interested in low mintage island country coins (like Bahamas, Bermuda, Seychelles, etc.). Why? Because prices for these coins are super low, while the prices are pretty small. There really needs to be a branch of collecting for island currency.

 

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Bahamas and Bermuda coins show up in my change - so I appreciate them - I like little piggies on pennies.

 

But if you check in the catalogues they do have pretty low mintages for some dates, sometimes around 2.5 million.

 

they are super common keeping the price way down. some of the coins look great though.

 

The old Jamaica coins have mintages as low as 20,000

 

did you get some old Jamaica coins ? post pics.

 

I don't have a camera yet.

 

What about hog money and the RF counter marked su coins? Those are very popular.

 

Just because a coin has a low mintage, it doesn't necessarily mean it's valuable. What makes a coin valuable is the demand for it. Take for example the 2001 American buffalo (commemorative) silver dollar. The maximum authorized mintage for the coin was 500,000 across all product lines. Now that's a high number for a commemorative coin and yet sales of the issue halted after only three weeks. The final production numbers were 227,131 (unc) and 272,869 (proof) and yet the coins still command quite a premium while other modern commems with much lesser mintage numbers go for (often times) less than the mint issue price. Why? Demand. Collectors love the classic design and are willing to pay the premium that the coin commands in the market place.

 

A lot of island coins have neat designs and I appreciate them for that. Check out the 1973 Barbados 2 dollar coin sometime. There are neat coins from the South Pacific too. It's not a target area for my collection but I'll buy them if I come across them and I like them.

 

The commems look cool too. Try to look into those.

 

Curiously the third most common country for coins found in roll searches is not Bahamas or Bermuda - but Great Britain. I find 1p coins in cent rolls, 5p coins in dime rolls and 20p coins in nickel rolls. Found a 20p just this morn.

The piggy coins from Bermuda are cool though - for my piggy bank!

 

Interesting discussion, my friends. As for me, I am a big fan of a coins from an exotic islands. Moreover, I have a big collection of such coins (such countries as Tuvalu, Kiribati, Tonga, Western Samoa etc.).

 

Don't think that anybody "should" be interested in this or that particular country, theme or period of time. But yes, those "exotic island coins" can be quite interesting; Siberian Man shows a couple here http://www.cointalk.com/threads/a-coins-from-exotic-islands.234882/ Don't actively collect them myself, but some are attractive ...

Christian

 

Some are kind of interesting. My problem with modern issues is most of them have not even been there themselves. Most are minted in Europe or the US, and sent to collectors directly. That, and most are NCLT in those countries, so really are not coins in my eyes. I would be more interested in a coin actually struck and used in Tuvalu than some pretty medal that got permission to put Tuvalu's name on it.

Just my opinion, ymmv of course. That, and Ken covered the reason why mintage is irrelevant in value. If you make ten but only five people in the world want one, what is the value of the other five?

 

But I usually do find older island currency in big lots or something.

 

A lot of small Caribbean island nation issues are for tourists and collectors. Most use US coinage and bills as the preferred method of currency. In some islands British and Dutch currency still circulated up to 1999.
A British friend of mein went to the Bahamas a few years ago and his UK money was still good there.

 

I like these, too.

it's true that demand is very low but the supplies of some of these coins is almost insignificant and middle classes are growing all over the world or are likely to in the future. Even where mintages are high the number of survivors can be extremely low.

It seems a lot of these will have very bright futures.

 

There were about 5 million 1950 5-centavos coins from Mexico produced, but all but 100,000 were melted.

 

I am very much with you on this one - as soon as any country starts mass producing coins for the collectors market I lose interest. For me, part of the attraction of coins is the history and usage they have had, and as soon as this is bypassed they become merely bullion or tourist pieces to me.
I think some countries need to beware of "killing the goose that lays the golden egg" in this way, and I include the UK Royal Mint in that. A proliferation of commemoratives, special and limited issues in the end just annoys the collectors - look how the over-supply of stamp issues and first day covers has all but killed modern stamp collecting.