This is a relatively scarce to probably rare coin. Original mintage of 571 pieces that were evidently released through the Central Bank in Port Au Spain, Trinidad. They were never in mint sets or in any organised release that I can tell, and of course have the FM mintmark/logo with none from other mints. Note these exist for the 1972 year also but nearly all struck at the Canadian mint & even with the same design have a distinctly different appearance. Look for the FM mintmark on these & they do exist in proof with most of the raw pieces so toned that it can be hard to tell proof versus currency status. These then had to survive the multiple silver melts that were possibly somewhat indiscriminate in the 55 years since that time. I took these pictures tonight of a coin I have had for at least 10-12 years. For some reason it has a golden hue which it does not have in hand. I will post natural light pictures hopefully tomorrow. Does anyone else have any information to add?
No 1971 to add, but I can add some numbers, because I went and looked at what has actually sold rather than what a book says. Last 90 days of completed eBay sales, the 1971 FM did not trade once. Not one. Nearly everything that came back under "Trinidad Tobago 5 dollars" was paper money. The silver that did sell: 1972, plain, auction, 08-14: $52.00 1972, listed as the no-letters FM variety, fixed ask, 08-13: $89.01 1977 sterling proof, fixed ask, 09-07: $120.00 1979 silver proof in the original packaging, fixed ask, 09-11: $70.00 2012 Concorde proof, fixed ask, 08-03: $140.34 Two things jumped out at me. The first is the floor. KM# 8 is 29.7 g of .925, and with silver where it sits this morning ($66.88 a troy ounce) that is $59.08 of metal in the coin. The plain 1972 that went to auction closed at $52.00, which is under its own melt. On this series the auction format is not finding a collector, it is finding a melter, and that seems worth knowing before somebody lists one cheap. The second is that scarcity and price are not the same conversation. 571 pieces is genuinely rare, but a coin with no completed sale in 90 days has no public price either, so there is nothing a buyer can point at. The asks that do sell are the ones wearing something a buyer can verify from the photo: the FM/no-letters variety on the 1972 brought $89.01 against $52.00 for the plain one a day apart, same year, same metal. Fair warning on the size of that. One sale on each side, so it is a direction and not a rule, and the 1977 and 1979 numbers are single sales too. If yours weighs 29.7 g it is the currency strike rather than the proof. Worth noting that the proofs from this series that do sell keep turning up with the original Franklin Mint packaging, which is probably a good part of why they bring what they bring.
