While at the library the other day, I picked up the 2005 Krause World Coin book and was leafing thru it. To my suprise, I saw a coin with our 16th president on it from another country. Any one want to guess which coin and which country?
Liberia would be a great guess and mine as well since it was Lincoln's idea to settle former slaves there and those freed slaves ended up running the country one way or another ever since. I would think it would be a Western African nation that had no colonial ties to France or England . I'm not strong on Africa so you got me beat on this one.
Somalia would be another one of the usual suspects when it comes to pseudo coins "from" Africa ;-) Christian
Oh, one of those countries that have "Guinea" in their name? Ah, found it in the KM. Odd by the way that in the very same year (1970) an almost identical piece featuring Lenin was issued ... Christian
You are correct Sir !! It was a 1970 Equatorial Guinea 75 pesetas. Now, were those coins for circulation or just some type of commerative? Why would another country put one of our presidents on their coins?
That's easy - there are a lot more collectors in the US to hype their "coins" to than there are in Equatorial Guinea.
Also, from what I know, some countries will "issue" commems at the request of major coin dealers (resellers). All the local government does is allow some company to mint "coins" in and with the name of the country. The company can then sell those "coins" to collectors, stating that they are legal tender in Soandso. (Which they sometimes are for a very short period of time only.) The government of Soandso then gets part of the revenue - and of course the coins are never actually sighted in the issuing country ... Christian
Well I got the area right anyway. West Africa and right under Cameroon, where French is still very much spoken. If the coins were both from 1970, I wonder if they were playing cold war politics by, pardon the pun, playing both sides of the coin.
