Hejaz & Nejd (Saudi Arabia) transitional overstruck coinage

Discussion in 'World Coins' started by Numismat, May 21, 2015.

  1. Numismat

    Numismat World coin enthusiast

    These coins are dated AH1343 (1924) and struck over silver-washed bronze 1/4 and 1/2 piastre coins of Hejaz minted about 9 years prior. Some details from the host coins are visible on the two shown here. The silver wash comes off very quickly, and specimens bearing full and lustrous silver surfaces are extremely difficult to find.

    1/4 ghirsh

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    1/2 ghirsh

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  3. gxseries

    gxseries Coin Collector

    Very interesting and excellent photos. I'm aware of their existence and tried to find one at a reasonable price for my overstrike coin collection but that proved to be either too pricy or difficult.
     
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  4. Numismat

    Numismat World coin enthusiast

    I've noticed people ask crazy prices for nice examples, way more than the coins are realistically worth. On eBay right now there are a pair of MS pieces in NGC slabs that the seller is asking like $1,500-$2,000 each. They will never ever sell even close to that price lol
     
  5. gxseries

    gxseries Coin Collector

    Overstrike coins are quite interesting and it's a really niche market. Somewhat underrated and not well studied. Even less is the history of them. I've only known the Russian overstruck coins and that proved to be a handful. Of course that includes the famous US 1804 dollar coin overstruck over Swiss thaler.

    They used to be available really cheap but these days it may not necessary be the case. This makes it a bit harder for me but overall it's actually a good sign for collectors to gain more knowledge.

    To be honest, it's hard to gauge the prices of overstrike coins. Yes, I know you can start arguing about prices being relative to grades but with overstrike coins, what makes it more interesting is how much details is preserved with the overall appearance. This actually presents a lot of history behind it.

    A god example that I have is a Russian 1757 1 kopek. Sure, it is very common and the grade is average. Look up in a catalog value and it probably wouldn't sell for more than 20 dollars give and take. How about a Swedish 1 ore coin struck around that era? Similar value, if not less. But how about a 1757 1 kopek over such 1 ore? Hard to price but I can assure you that it is not common at all. Not well documented in many catalog Price wise, I've seen it go for over 10 - 200+ dollars, depending on how they were advertised and how hard buyers want to pay for it. Put the price aside - that is a lot of history from just one coin alone!

    Another similar example of a crazily priced overstruck coin that I can remember off hand is the Austrian zinc coins overstruck over German Nazi coins. This type of coin would normally go for just a few dollars at most. If they are overstruck, most of them that I have seen had little details of the original host coin. There was a couple of really nice UNC coins with very strong feature of the underlayer, with the year and mintmark present. That went for more than a few hundred dollars - I think it was closer to 600 dollars. At that time I thought it was quite absurd but now that I try to find a similar example, they prove to be very difficult.

    In short, I think overstruck coins are a different field to price and it's really up to buyers to decide what they want to pay for. Certainly not melt value if the coins are in decent condition.
     
    Numismat likes this.
  6. Numismat

    Numismat World coin enthusiast

    Very well written post, and I totally agree. I have actually been looking closely at those Austrian zinc coins looking for signs of an overstrike on Nazi 10 pfennig ever since you posted it on the forum ATS (across the street). No luck finding one so far, which only goes to show how scarce and under-rated they are as I've looked at hundreds of them since then and had no luck.
     
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