OK, I have been looking at some Guyana uncirculated coins from the Franklin Mint era 1976-1980. Krause has the following information: As with other FM issues, uncirculated coins are listed as (U) proof like uncirculated, and (M) matte uncirculated. The only listed FM issued specimen unc. sets are from only the years 1977 and 1978 - I have NEVER seen these. Evidently the Central Bank in Guyana did however package up smaller sets and individual dollar coins in green cardboard packaging. These came in 5 coin (1c-50c) and 6 coin sets (1c-$1), and individual $1 packaged sets with no FM insignia on the packaging at all, but all coins with the monogram struck on them. It may be that there is a third type of currency coin struck by the FM for Guyana that is not (U) or (M), and I have taken pictures of a 1976FM dollar from one of the 6 coin sets as well as pictures of a single loose (M) dollar. The set coin does NOT appear to be either and is rather crudely struck - almost hinting at a hurried production as the fields are very porous and rather poorly struck, very bad planchet preparation. Another alternative is that it is a very poorly prepped (U) coin, as are all the others from these Bank of Guyana sets. I have not seen any other Caribbean unc. coins struck by the FM (or at least with the FM mintmark) that have this appearance. There is a very pebbly and non-PL surface to these. I am not aware of any other Caribbean countries that issued PL coins for circulation, but this one looks like it. What do readers think? The (M) coin has bag marks on it as though it was also intended for circulation. So which is the first coin, (U), (M), or something else? And what about the mintage figures in Krause, with this year dollar as an example: (U) - 50 (M) - 600 Note that the single matte coin is apparently much harder to come by than the set coins, such as the first one illustrated.
This thread never did really catch on, but thought I’d add just a bit. Below I have posted pictures of the 1976 copper nickel proof Dollar. I have come to the conclusion that the first pictured specimen is a (U) uncirculated, but executed more poorly than FM (U) coins that we are more familiar with that are sourced from the packaged mint sets on 1976 - such as might be seen from Barbados or Belize or Jamaica or Trinidad. No FM packaged (U) specimen sets are known or recorded from Guyana in 1976 so this is likely a coin struck on somewhat lesser quality by the FM and then subsequently packaged by the Central Bank of Guyana as was mentioned in the first post. I believe then that the recorded 50 specimens of (U) quality are represented by this coin
I am probably wearing out this one person topic, but below show what are pictures of an ostensibly similar Belize 1978 FM (U) one dollar coin NOT from a specimen set - this was part of a group of coins that came from Central Bank of Belize who unlike Guyana never packaged these coins. As you can see the surfaces are rather nicer on the Belize coin. The other Belize 1978 coins and those from 1977 which are also of (U) type and are also of better quality.
I have found that the Belize FM coins that I have seem to be of exceptional quality. I do not have any help on your Guyana topic.
Hard to see in these photos, but a Guyana 1980 (U) 10 dollar coin has the same rough pebbly finish that the "in question" 1976 (probable U) Guyana dollar has. Up close it looks to be very poor planchet prep and that the actual dies were rather decent and in the areas struck up there is none.
I have all five of the Guyanese proof sets from 1976-1980 and have looked for any possible uncirculated sets of the same coins for years and never, ever found an offering.
That is wonderful. There are 6 and 8 coin proof sets, do you have both? Seller IMDUS on eBay has some 5 coin uncirculated sets (1c through 50c) that are FM; these are not always of the same year within the set however.
