“Buy us!”, they trumpeted. So I did. Bonus: two cheetahs also came along for the ride. “What is this, Noah’s Ark?” I asked them. “OK, get in.”
Love a Somali elephant coin. I started working closely with Somalia in 2011 and so, started buying the Somali elephant coins each year. I wanted to get the older issues but they are quite expensive. Fun fact: The word for elephant in Somali is "maroodi" (pronounced Ma-Roady). That's all from your friendly neighborhood linguist for today An aside note, the thought of QEII and leopard print is just.....off putting...
Nifty! As a former childhood resident of Tanzania, I can tell you that “giraffe” in Swahili is twiga. That’s one of the few Swahili words that I retained in my vocabulary. You could probably count the rest without running out of fingers. Her Maj would likely agree herself, but hey... it’s different. I find it interesting, myself, in a weird kinda way.
Swahili is not my forte, as I haven't formally studied it...but It comes up quite often in my daily stuff so I can read a bit. Mostly just greetings. Tanzania is beautiful. Well at least the coastline is haha. I spent a couple of days off the cost of Dar es Salaam playing with the Tanzanian coast guard.
The Ghanaian leopard coin is also MS69 (PCGS). I submitted that one myself. It is population 1/0 - in other words, the only one certified by PCGS out of a 50K mintage. I’m kind of surprised to have been the only person to submit one so far. Haven’t checked the NGC pops. MS69 seems to be a thing with this prooflike NCLT modern bullion.
The leopard is beautiful. If you are interested in those, there were also a few Somali leopards that were minted. I think they started in 2019.
Very nice coins! I visited Tanzania on safari in 2015 and hit most of the popular spots in the northern region (Arusha, Serengeti, Ngorongoro). Very beautiful country with amazing wildlife (including birds). I picked up a few words of Swahili, all I can remember are jambo (hello), tembo (elephant), and simba (lion). There were not many coins being used (inflation had driven most out of circulation) but I acquired these specimens:
I remember jambo (hello), twiga (giraffe), tembo (elephant), samaki (fish), and ... um... Yeah. Not much else. I was only six when we moved to Tanzania. Interestingly, just about all of the people we were surrounded by were Greeks.
Excluding Egypt, here is the only other African coin in my collection besides the two posted above. I was delighted to find it in a bulk lot. It was struck the year we lived there. I used to get one of these for my weekly allowance, if I had been a good boy. I seem to recall buying a plastic model airplane kit with one. Though it's like a $3-ish coin per the catalog value, I submitted it to PCGS anyway, so as to include it in my collection for sentimental reasons. So it's essentially a $3-ish coin in a $50-ish slab, but I don't care. Unsurprisingly, it is the top-pop coin at PCGS- and the only one certified- since again, I'm evidently the only person who ever submitted one.
