just wondering if most the aluminum coins made were not worth much becasue of large cirulation made? i have vietnam, taiwan,indonesia,s.arabia, czech.,french indo-china and others that i have alot of. just wondering if maybe these coins are just filler type coins for collections? i know most likey a foolish question, but im trying to see whats worthy of keeping or not thanks.
Type collectors need one example of each aluminum denomination in their area of interest Date/mint mark collectors need one example of each aluminum coin for every year/mintmark combination in their area of interest Collectors who concentrate exclusively on precious metals don't need any aluminum coins. Now, repeat the above list substituting copper, bronze, cu-ni, nickel, brass, and all other base metals used for coinage. In other words, for most purposes the specific metallic composition of a coin has little or no influence on its numismatic value. Aluminum coins are no more "fillers" than any other composition.
thanks for the explaination hontonai. the thing is that the coins i have are the same yr, same denomation on most of these i have thats why i was wondering. thanks again.
Aluminum has been a common coinage material only since the onset of WW II. Coinage of most countries that didn't issue silver and gold coins since WW II has been very very lightly collected. As a rule a lot of aluminum has been very very lightly collected as well. These coins wear exceedingly poorly and tend to last only a few years in circulation. Even when they don't get bent in feats of strenght they wear rapidly especially where they circulate with heavier coins. On the other side of the equation is the fact that these are usually extremely low denomination coins. This means if you're inclined to save them for the future you can save large numbers at very low cost. Some coins like 1952 Indonaesian aluminum was saved ion vast quantities and you can find nice uncirculated examples with very little effort. But a '50-E E. German 10p which was made in huge numbers was hardly saved at all. Despite the high mintage the coin is elusive even in VF and retails for $1000 in unc. Keep in mind though that almost all aluminum coins have an extremely low demand. If the demand were the same on these that it is on silver coins many more would be very difficult to locate and quite expensive. There is a tendency for AL coinage to be common in very low grades. This is because when coins are recalled for destruction the aluminum coins have such low value many will escape the melting pot. Even if 2% of mintage survives they'll usually be very common. These will always be low grade if the coin circulated for any lenght of time though.
