Does anyone know why the gold 20 mark was not minted from 1901 thru 1912? The gold 10 mark was minted throughout those years and the final year minted for both was 1913 which I assume was due to World War I I curious as to if there is any significance to these facts, I recently purchased a 1913J and trying to do a little research on the coin for my catalog.
Perhaps they were not needed. There were over 3/4 million of the 10 Mark pieces minted in just the 1903-07 period. This quantity may have sufficed for the amount of population and volume of use for them at the time. In addition, this was nearly 90,000 ounces of gold coined in 5 years, perhaps a good bit of the kingdom's reserve? Having this many 10 Mark coins may have negated the need for a denomination of twice the value until inflation started to kick in (1913?).
Yes, I think so too. Even though in those years each German state had the right to issue "high value" silver and gold coins, there was of course a limit to how many were actually needed. Another issue was that 10 and 20 mark coins could be made by request. Most of these extra issues were ordered by the Reichsbank and made by the Berlin mint, but theoretically anybody could go to a mint, deliver some gold and have coins made from that. According to the Jaeger, of the ~223 million 20 mark pieces issued until 1913, about 176 million were such "extra" orders. If you look at the Hamburg coins, precisely fourteen 20 M pieces were made between 1901 and 1912 - "all" of them in 1908. But if you look at other "smaller" mints, such as Karlsruhe/G, you will notice the same effect: Gold coins were made in relatively few years only. By the way, Hamburg was not a kingdom. It was and still is a free city, ie. a city that has the status of a state. Christian
They do exist as counterfeits, I bought this in Hamburg in 1993 from whom I thought was a reputable dealer.
Those 5, 10, and 20 M gold coins were "reproduced" en masse by the famous Dr. Schmidt, for example, a dentist from Bonn who (mis)used a legal loophole in the 1960s. (But I think he used years that actually occurred on the historic coins.) Generally, if you buy coins from a German dealer who is a member of the VDN and/or the IAPN, this dealer will guarantee that the coins you buy are not counterfeit ... Christian
