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Message:: [QUOTE="Guilder Pincher, post: 8317246, member: 87595"]I bought this coin, Netherlands 2.5 gulden 1840, when I returned to the hobby in 2016 and had some money to burn from selling stuff from my previous hobby. After six years, it remains the most expensive coin I ever bought at €475. It's also the rarest in my collection with a mintage of just over 44,000. I have always loved the portrait of the aged king Willem I, I feel it captures his personality really well: an arrogant king, embittered and unwilling to accept the changes in the political reality of the time. Frustrated by the unwillingness of the public and the political elite to accept his whims as they used to, he abdicated on October 7, 1840 and left the country for Berlin, never to return. He died there in 1843. Most coins of this type were in fact struck after his abdication, requiring royal assent from his son and heir Willem II for the mint to be allowed to strike them. Many of these tend to show heavy corrosion and a die crack above Willem's head along the beaded edge, which makes me suspect only one set of working dies was ever made. They were used until Willem II's obverse dies were ready in 1841. Specs: Netherlands, 2.5 gulden 1840, .945 silver, 25 grams, 38 mm. Km #67.[ATTACH=full]1472733[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1472734[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]