Coins in Movies - The Great Sinner (1949) with Gregory Peck and German thalers on the table

"The Great Sinner" is a 1949 film set around 1860 at the Wiesbaden casino in Germany.

Gregory Peck meets Ava Gardner and she introduces him to gambling.


"The Great Sinner" - Gregory Peck

At one point he puts two coins on the roulette table:


"The Great Sinner" - Coins on the table

The coin showing is a Germany Prussia Vereinsthaler of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV minted 1857 to 1861.

Naturally, I just had to get one:


Germany Prussia Vereinsthaler 1860
Silver, 34 mm, 18.52 gm, Berlin mint 'A'
Obverse: FRIEDR. WILHELM IV KOENIG V. PREUSSEN
Reverse: EIN VEREINSTHALER XXX EIN PFUND FEIN 1860

The film does not explicitly state what "great sin" Gregory Peck has committed but could he have killed a ...

 

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Your post brought to light my own curiosity on movie coins. The movie wasn’t a blockbuster, I liked it, but the coin in it was intriguing although it was never really seen up close.



I had to do some scrolling in my Google search to find out what it was. People asked but no one seemed to know but I think I found the answer in the book. I couldn’t find an example of the right coin by the description (added below the following photo) of it however... maybe someone knows it.

 

The odd thing is that Wiesbaden was part (and capital) of Nassau until Prussia swallowed Nassau in 1866. But it may well be, of course, that "older" Prussian coins were used there after the annexation. Great detective work anyway!

Christian

 

Caught the end of Indecent Proposal the other day, and wasn't even expecting it, but towards the end, I think its Robert Redford is letting Demi Moore out of the limo, and he hands her what I believe is a Walking Liberty Silver Dollar.
I would have never picked up on that before I started getting into coins like I have. Feel free to correct me about what the coin is. I expect it.
Thanks. Enjoy the movies, and the coins.

Foo out

 

I've never seen that movie, but the coin sure looks to me like the Wilhelm I 5 mark of 1874-1876. If I am right, it obviously does not fit for 1860s era, but it is still old and Prussian-y.

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces19823.html

 

Another scene with a vereinsthaler obverse and three coin reverses:



The coin reverses shown are not the reverses of vereinsthalers but are reverses of German States post 1871 unification 3 mark coins.

 

Definitely the 5 mark coins. No 3 mark coins were minted with that "small eagle" type reverse.

 

No country for old men.

 

In the four coin picture, the obverse vereinsthaler and the three reverses are about the same size.

The obverse looks a little larger than the reverse next to it.

The thaler is 34 mm and the 3-mark coin is 33 mm. The 5-mark coin is 38 mm which makes it too big.

 

I don't know about the coin, but as a small kid I fell heavily in love with Eva Gardner. Movie 1949, I was born two years before the movie, so I figure I was around 7 when my secret love affair started. She was a beautiful woman. Nice Coin.

 

What an interesting post! I love movie coins and I was unaware of this one.

As for the coin in question, here is my impression of Gregory Peck in The Great Sinner (even my thumb isn't as good-looking as Peck's):



That is a Prussian silver 5 mark dated 1876, Breslau Mint. Assuming my hand is about the same size as Peck's (if not as handsome), I'd say he is holding a 5 mark coin, and not a thaler or 3 mark (based on relative size of hand-to-coin). The reverse photos posted above bear this out as well - that malnourished eagle was pretty distinctive on Reich 5 marks of the 1870s-1880s.

 

Ava Gardner

It is possible that the MGM studio needed some "German" coins for the film and had them made specifically for the film.


Casino roulette wheel

There is a box with stacks of coins and some are showing heads similar to the thaler.

 

Prop money used in movies should of course not cause any raised eyebrows among the audience. So as long as bills that are supposed to be USD bills look like US dollars, all is well. And with a scene or movie at some foreign location, decades ago, you can even be more "generous" when it comes to details. How many people would, 70 years ago, have taken single images out of movies, maybe blown the image up, and analyzed the coins?

Christian

 

Strangely enough, prop money is becoming a counterfeit problem, according to a recent article in The Atlantic:

Movie-Prop Cash Is Fooling Cashiers
The strange psychology of why so many people fail to notice obviously counterfeit money

Rene Chun, June 2019 issue

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/fake-money-amazon-ebay/588046/

 

great chatch @willieboyd2
I like comparing movie money to the real stuff.

 

Hus.thaler wrote: I've never seen that movie, but the coin sure looks to me like the Wilhelm I 5 mark of 1874-1876.

Thank you for the information, Hus.thaler

The Wilhelm I 5 mark coin certainly resembles the coin in the film as both kings Friedrich Wilhelm IV and Wilhelm I look alike.

The 5 mark coin would also solve the problem of the reverses.

But what do I do with my Vereinsthaler?

 

The plot thickens:

Here is a picture of the film coin obverse:


Coin on casino roulette table

The obverse text appears to be:
FRIEDR. WILHELM IV KOENIG V. PREUSSEN
which is the text on the Vereinsthaler.

 

The John Wick movies, also starring Keanu Reeves, feature gold coins (privately minted), which are the accepted currency for goods and services among the underworld professional assassins and their associates - seems that APMEX has created replicas for sale in gold, silver and silver proof.- https://www.apmex.com/product/191440/john-wick-1-oz-gold-continental-coin-w-box-coa

For a more expansive discussion of the John Wick gold coins, see here:
https://john-wick.fandom.com/wiki/Gold_Coin

 

A scene from John Wick, where he pays Charlie the 'cleaner' in gold coins for professional services rendered after the bloody shootout in Wick's home

 

In this scene from the 1951 film "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman" Ava Gardner is in the house of an archaeologist and numismatist and looks at some of his notes.