This is one of the projects that had to be done by this year for a good reason. Some may have been reading the news and it's history. It is Hong Kong 20th anniversary hand over to China. Hong Kong used to be under the British rule from 1841 to 1997. During this time, Hong Kong was home to various foreign coinage as Hong Kong was a vital trading port. A new mint was established and opened in 1866. This only lasted for two years as the public perception of such coins was deemed to be poor. Ironically the same equipment that was sold off to Osaka Mint was more successful a couple years later. Coins later were struck in England. Various coins were struck with the English Monarch and eventually Queen Elizabeth's portrait had to go. Some of the latest Hong Kong coins are interesting as they come in scallop shape. With such interesting history - there's no reason why you can't be tempted in a type set in this. Dansco actually has made one about 50 years ago and it needed an update really badly. Plus I didn't quite agree with the overall presentation. Just missing one coin but it's good enough for me. Presenting you the latest digital Hong Kong type set album: https://issuu.com/gxseries/docs/hong_kong_type_album_1863_present This as usual proved to be harder than expected for the following reason (I'll leave the key dates last) 1) Timeline of Hong Kong coinage. Some denominations do overlap in odd eras. I personally found the 1890 - 1894 50 cents, 1982 - 1984 10 cents, 1980 - 1984 5 dollars to be out of line. 2) 1931 to 1941 must have been a chaotic time. Many different type of coins, not including the rare 1941 1 cent coin 3) Photoshop wise... try to do a decagon shape or a scallop shape. Not fun cropping. 4) Lastly - of course finding the coins. Mind you - I've tried hard to obtain them at a reasonable cost. Most of them are actually very affordable with the exception of the silver 50 cents and the large silver dollar coin. I was lucky to obtain a fair number of them including the Dansco type set album a while back. On the topic of rarity according to my opinion / experience (excluding 1941 1 cent) 1) 1866 - 1868 1/2 dollar: Total mintage figure at just mere 59,000 (!!!) 2) 1866 - 1868 1 dollar 3) 1902 - 1905 20 cents. Strangely while mintage figures seem to be reasonably high, this coin rarely appear in the market. In fact, it's much harder to find compared to the 1866 - 1868 dollar coins. Why? 4) 1935 5 cents. Mintage figure does not seem to make this rare but it's unusually hard to find. The rest are a lot easier to find. Now if you ask me what my favorite Hong Kong coin is, it would be the scallop 2 dollar coin. This is one of the first Hong Kong coins that I believe I got from my dad from a business trip that I remembered vividly along with the 20 cents coin. I liked the thick 5 dollar and the bi metal 10 dollar but ultimate it's the shape that fancied me as a kid. My good friend also gave me one a while back. Please feel free to post your Hong Kong coins! I predict there will be a large surge in search on ebay for Hong Kong coins the next few weeks...
That is pretty impressive. What would you guess is your total time invested in creating that? Level of difficulty?
Easily a couple of months. In between I would have thrown out a few versions that I didn't like. Mind you, it's not like I am doing this full time and was doing this at my own pace. Rearranging them was a real pain as some just looked odd when I tried to place them together.
Excellent! Very nice collection and I can personally appreciate the difficulty and time involved in collecting the coins and creating your album.
Revived an old thread... this album is now complete! I sold some duplicates off my collection and saved as much as I could for quite a while. The last coin missing is the 1866 / 1867 half dollar. There are at least five half dollar that appeared in the market this year despite the low mintage. I honestly didn't think I would win this as it's the most I have paid for a single coin - I just scrapped by. Thankfully this was unslabbed so it could fit in the Dansco album. There were many other examples sold in slabs and significantly higher. Dansco album: https://issuu.com/gxseries/docs/hong_kong_dansco_type_set My digital updated Hong Kong Type set album https://issuu.com/gxseries/docs/hong_kong_type_album_1863_present This album would have been very doable a decade ago but a couple of coins have definitely escalated in prices. Actually aren't a lot of classic world Dansco albums becoming quite difficult to complete? One thing that I did find interesting with my Dansco Hong Kong album is that the slot for 1890-1894 50 cents is exactly the same size as the 1866 - 67 half dollar. The latter 50 cents is actually 1mm smaller which rattled around the album. It drove me crazy and I solved it by shoving a thin piece of cardboard - which is evident in the scan. Now that I plugged this hole, I'll take a step back and revisit what I have in my own collection...
That's really nice. I wouldn't mind doing something like that. Can you give us an idea of the process for creating something like this? Any special software?
Congratulations @gxseries; that's a very nice album. It'll probably be quite a while before I complete my album.
I enjoyed looking at the album. Is each coin's image loaded separately? (Because each one looks so good.) Do you know if the ones with the Queen are still circulating today?
I wouldn't be surprised if coins with her portrait still circulate in Hong Kong. Regardless, I seem to remember reading something not that long ago that coins with the Queen's portrait still circulate but are gradually being phased out.
I've used Photoshop and merged all images as pdf. Each photo is taken individually and labelled accordingly. Takes a while to do it but the overall result looks great
