In 1988 I won this 10 piece 1969 Proof Set from Stacks Auction for $1200US. This set has 4 AV coins 1000/500/100/50 Shillings=230g/7oz gold! The 1000 Shilling weighs 138g. 68mm. Photos shows 1000 shillings
WOW! Don't drop it on your foot! I lived in East Africa in 1972 (Tanzania, right near Uganda) not long after that coin was made. Too bad I didn't get anything like that in my allowance, eh? I do remember spending these. I was six/seven years old at the time.
Today, I have no appetite to get the modern stuff/ I cannot stand the "coloured coins/motifs like Superman/ modernistic art designs.Now, had i been around in the 1600s/ probably would have lined up at the Prague/Vienna/Breslau mints for freshly struck AV Dukaten coinage/ would have been in heaven! Of course I would have had to been born into the aristocracy for that wishfull fantasy.
Please excuse my stupidity, but why are they referred to as "AV" coins instead of "AU" coins? Is this just a variation based on the language? Chris
Someone may correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sore that's a holdover from old Roman times. The Romans didn't have a letter "U". (Edit: I've heard it said that this is because a "U" would be more difficult to chisel into stone than a "V", but I have no idea if that's true or not.) This is why you will often see old 1920s neoclassical buildings here in the USA that say "COVRT HOVSE", or, for that matter, "IN GOD WE TRVST" on the Peace dollars. They were simply mimicking the Romans.
Speaking of confusing Roman holdovers, the British up until 1970 used a small "d" to abbreviate "penny". Even though decimalization changed the abbreviation to a more sensible "p" for "pence", why were pennies once "1d" and threepence "3d", and a twelvepenny nail in a hardware store is still a "12d nail"? Denarium. Penny. The old Latin stuff creeps in everywhere, even after two millennia.
The bird on the reverse right is a Ugandan Crested Crane. Several years ago two got loose in Los Altos (California) and were seen all over town for a while.
Three winters ago we had a Snowy Owl here. In SE coastal Georgia. An arctic owl. Right near the Florida border. That was a trip. It hung around a while on the roof of the hotel I worked in, and we actually rented rooms to two or three sets of bird-watchers who had been following it around.
Actually, here where I live we have lots of snowy owls. But the most common owl is the Great Horned Owl. Sometimes we even get a Great Grey Owl!
Could indeed be a reference to the Romans, but keep in mind that Charlemagne introduced the denarius as part of his coinage reform. 240 denarii = 20 solidi = 1 libra. The British adopted that system and used it until they went decimal. @doctorxring - That piece commemorates the papal visit to Uganda. So the guy with the nose is Paul VI ... Christian
Absolutely. The Carolingian reforms in the 8th century (Pépin and primarily his son Charlemagne) "revived" some ancient Roman units and denominations that had not been used for a long time - not in Charlemagne's realm, and not in countries that later adopted the Carolingian system. The Papal Visit coins (6 silver, 4 gold) from Uganda, by the way, were apparently minted by various manufacturers: Unoaerre, Monnaie de Paris, Karlsruhe mint ... And for whichever reason, some of the gold pieces are Au900 while others are Au920. Christian
Thanks for that info, the presentation box/coins are beautifull. Four oz. AV coins (1000 Shillings) are equal in weight, to the classic 40 Dukaten pieces of the Holy Roman Empire mints. The 10 oz. 100 Dukaten must have been a dream to own, back when they were minted/ even more so today! Today, we have silly BIT coins/plastic credit cards/paper currency/ resulting in Countries/States/Cities/people operating in deficits/huge debt loads....plus inflation gone rampant. When real $ (gold/silver) coinage were in vogue/ zero inflation. The AV Dukat of 1545 Austria had same gold content as the Yugoslavia Dukat of 1931!
Don't agree with that. Look at the inflation in the 16th century (not only in Spain), look at the deflation before. (Links in German.) And in later years (17/18c), if the gap between the value gold and the value of the "everyday" copper coins widens more and more (see the "Münzverschlechterung" section of that article), well, those who have gold will profit while the others ... All this does not have much to do with the fact that many of the coins you have and show are beautiful or even stunning. Christian
