I was going through a box of foreign "junk", just pulling the Canadian cents, British pence, etc. Guess what I found? A new "place" for my OFEC collection!!! Now this is a rarity in and of itself, but the "place" I found is really rare, so rare I've never seen one before. I found an 1894 A 1 Pfenning in XF from German New Guinea. The mintage on this is 33,000. In fact, the mintage for all coins made for the colony of all types and years only come to 158,000. Talk about a tough OFEC! Now comes the tough question, to keep it or sell it? I suspect I could get at least $150 for it and $150 would more than pay for the entire box of "junk" I am digging through plus leave me something for the next box.
i think that german new guinee is the most difficult colonial coinage to get hold of no doubt chrislid will be able to offer a more in depth analysis.
Umm, I don't really collect German Empire coins (my focus is on coins from my country, the Federal Republic of Germany, plus euro plus other modern pieces) but yes, that New Guinea 1 Pfennig is pretty rare indeed. As for mintage figures, originally 500,000 were made - but later about 467,000 of them were melted down, so the remaining population is 33,000 "plus X". And that X refers to the number of counterfeits; there are quite a few of them around. Now jays-dad, if your coin is authentic but not really what you collect, I would try and sell it. However, if any of the "successor countries" - Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Palau, etc. - is part of your collection, that could be a reason to keep it. Christian
Counterfeits! Yikes. Contemporary or Chinese? How to spot? Considering it was just in a big box of "junk" I really didn't think of it as counterfeit. The seller most definitely did not try to sneak it past me because I'm certain the seller did not really know what was in the box of "junk".
The German New Guinea counterfeits that I have read about are hard to recognize. Basically "irregularities" in the characters; some have little dots or lines. But I agree, judging from how you got it, yours may well be authentic. Had the dealer made you a "bargain offer" of $50 or so, that would have meant "be careful". Since that was not the case here ... Christian
In the same box I just found a XF Mexico 1 Centavo from 1920. Catalog value on this is $110. Same dilemma as the German New Guinea one, sell or keep. I found close to 100 that I already put on ebay, hoping to get enough in return to allow me to keep the German New Guinea coin. Now for a Mexico 1 Centavo. I collect Mexico, I have tons of stuff. But I very rarely pursue it on purpose. Keep a coin I can get $50 or more for or sell it to buy stuff I really collect, not just accumulate.
By the way, I think I've resigned myself to keep the coin from German New Guinea. I'm a big OFEC collector. Additionally, I love colonials. I've got tons of British colonials. A whole lotta French colonials. A bunch of Portuguese colonials. A few Belgian colonials. But for German colonials the pickings are awfully scarce (German SW Africa is about it til now).
