Highest circulation denomination coin ever?

My guess is bicentennial quarter

 

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Oops. Was thinking circulation

 

Don't be like me. Read the op's question

 

100 dollars

 

So just admit. None of you can answer a very simple question.

 

I sure did - see my reply #3 in this very topic. Problem is, as several people have written here before, the answer is not as easy as the question may sound. Another issue is that the question @Kentucky asked here a little later is worded a little differently ...

If local notgeld is included too, then that Westphalian 1 Billion (US: 1 trillion) Mark piece is pretty much at the top of the list. Except it was not a circulation coin. (Oh, and Billion is written as a word.)

If we focus on government issued coins, there was a Turkish 150 million lira coin in 2000. Problem is, that was not a circulation coin either - and worse, it did not say "150 000 000" but "150 milyon". Thus, not digits only ...

According to Numista, this piece was actually a circulating commem: 1,000,000 lira 2002. Now would that be "general circulation"? Dunno, but we sure see lots of zeros there.

Now this coin was definitely a circulation coin. So we have a 250,000 piece there ... except it says "250 bin" instead of using digits only (bin = thousand).

Christian

 

Oh yes, I am well aware of how much those Turkish coins were "worth". But that was my attempt at addressing kentucky's question in post #38 ...

The funny thing is, it should not be all that difficult to find the "most zeros ever" circulation coin - and yet it apparently is tough. Of course with high/hyper inflation money you also run into the problem that at some point a few zeros will "simply" be chopped, making the amounts a little handier without actually taking care of the underlying issues.

So currently I vote for that Turkish 1 million lira piece. Circulation plus lots of zeros.

Christian

 

Let me know when anyone wants the Lowest circulation coin ever !!!

 

Very interesting question posed by the OP. There are several ways of looking at this question. I think one way to do this is my asking what percentage of an average worker's daily wage did that coin represent. For example, circa 1850's a US Twenty Dollar Double Eagle of about one ounce of gold was worth about 15 to 20 days wages back East for a semi skilled worker. A coin of considerable value.

But I would go back earlier to ancient times when both gold and silver were, relative to labor, worth more than in the US in the 19th century. These two gold coins, one a First century BC Greek stater of Mithradates had a little more than 8 grams of pure gold. It was worth some 28-30 drachmas of silver and at that time a drachma of silver was a days wage for a mercenary soldier or a skilled worker. The other gold coin is a mid First Century AD Roman, almost all gold, aureus of Emperor Nero, a bit more than 7 grams of gold or 25 silver denarii, or about three weeks wages for a skilled worker.

Looking at coins this way, although the two ancient gold coins are each lighter in weigh and smaller in size than a US Double Eagle, they each have a higher value in terms of the labor or goods they could buy. Size alone, without taking into account other factors, makes it very problematic to determine how valuable a coin was. but the OP posed a good question because it makes us see the value of a coin in its context of time and place.

 

500 Yen, and 5 Swiss Franc like @chrisild said, which have a value of around $5.
The 2 GBP would also be high denomination in my opinion, with a value of around $2.5.

In terms of denomination, there's this:

 

OK...what it is?

 

The vending machine lobby... depending on the technical difficulties of reading notes or dispensing change... Turkey, post-Soviet Russia... maybe even Zimbabwe (with the "bond" coins)... has got to be behind modern highly "enumerated" coins.

 

Nothing whatsoever. "When the sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home."

 

Quarter farthing, 3840 to 1£...

 

Seems that the OP now wants to know exactly that: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/what-was-the-lowest-denomination-coin-to-be-in-circulation.340827/ Then again, he never bothered to post to this topic again after his initial message, so why bother ...

Christian

 

Here's a really high denomination banknote, but not worth a great deal in real $$

 

Zimbabwe - financially, the Never, Never, Land !!!