Nazi Coin

Discussion in 'World Coins' started by CoinOKC, Apr 17, 2005.

  1. WaA140

    WaA140 New Member

    Your point is valid regarding the treatment of the American Indians but you proabably are not aware that the US army consisted largely of immigrants from Europe. The sad fact is that during that era many, not all, people of European descent or origin considered the American Indians to be "savages" that could not be tamed or trusted. It is not a proud moment in human history but it applies to all of the civilized world at that time. Nevertheless, the "taming" of the American West is a fascinating era as are other periods of history such as the Roman empire, etc.
     
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  3. CoinOKC

    CoinOKC Don't Drink The Kool-Aid

    I live in Oklahoma City. My ethnic heritage is German, American Indian, Irish, Scottish and French.

    My nationality is American (I live in the United States). I never said the U.S. was perfect, in fact, there are some instances in American History where I would not agree with its policy (read some of my previous posts).

    However, I can think of nothing in recent history that even approaches the atrocities and the horrendous inhumanity commited by Nazi Germany.

    So, as a private protest, I think I'm going to melt my new Nazi coin into slag. Please feel free to do the same with any American coinage.

    Or, I might even consider mailing my new Nazi coin to you in Germany... oh, wait... you guys don't have the freedom to possess Nazi coins, do you?

    Oh, the smell of freedom is so much sweeter when it's not filtered.
     
  4. sylvester

    sylvester New Member


    Bolshevik (sp?) and Stalinist Russia...

    Trust me we had a book in the local archives on some of the atrocities done to individuals by the Bolsheviks, many victims tortured for sheer amusement of their captors. Some of the pictures were gross (thank gods they were in black and white).

    But as you say with Nazi Germany there was also Dr Mengele and the brutal twins experiments.

    All three regimes are as bad as each other.
     
  5. sylvester

    sylvester New Member

    Actually that's a myth, no idea where it came from but it's perfectly legal to buy, sell and own Nazi coins in Germany, i know a dealer there who sells them.
     
  6. antidote

    antidote New Member


    Thanks, but no thanx ;) take a look at my profile and follow the link to take a look at "my coins".

    It's no problem for german citizens to collect coins showing swastikas or medals showing Adolf.
     
  7. rick

    rick Coin Collector

    You created this thread to learn more about this coin. I am confused, you say that this coin is the most fascinating piece in your collection, right now, and in the next post you write about destroying it.:eek:

    Fascination will always go hand in hand with emotional response. My thoughts: Your wanting to destroy this piece is the very reason that you should not do so.

    Why not sell it, and use that money to purchase the pendant? Wouldn't that serve the same purpose AND keep this coin in existance for other people to share such emotions and learn from them?

    Like it or hate it, that is what education does - it sometimes teaches us about things we would rather not know. But not knowing does not undo. Share it with others.
     
  8. sylvester

    sylvester New Member

    Remember;

    One man's poison is another man's treasure.

    I personally wouldn't give Jefferson nickels the time of day (but i admire some of Thomas Jefferson's ideas). Some collectors love 'em, their treasure, my poison.

    I might like Nazi coins (intensely dislike the political ideals behind them) but they are worth their weight in the painful lesson of history. One not to be eradicated nor forgotten, wouldn't want loonies like that taking hold of political power again. History is a lesson to be learned from, you can't learn from it if you refuse to accept it and you try to destroy any evidence of it ever happening.

    If you don't want the coin sell it, or give it away.
     
  9. The_Cave_Troll

    The_Cave_Troll The Coin Troll

    The myth is perpetuated by eBay. They restrict the sale of Nazi items as part of their offensive items policy. (They specifically make an exception for coins/stamps, though). I read an auction this morning that was for a Nazi coin and the listing said that he wouldn't sell to Germany, France, Italy, or BAustria because of the nature of the item. I also remember reading the restriction that seller was talking about when I first started selling on eBay, but when I went back just now to see if I could find a link I was unable to find it. It appears as if they have changed their policy on Nazi coins since I started selling.

    Actually, here is an auction where the seller quotes the eBay rule prohibiting the coins sale in Germany, et al.

    http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=540&item=3969806367&rd=1
     
  10. CoinOKC

    CoinOKC Don't Drink The Kool-Aid

    I can honestly say that I don't "like" anything associated with the Nazis. I don't like their ideals or their coins. Just because I find the coin fascinating from an historical perspective doesn't mean that I might not want to see it melted into scrap.

    Six million souls of the Jewish faith crying from their graves will guarantee that no one will ever forget the diabolical Nazi regime. If I could melt all the Nazi coins ever produced, it wouldn't be enough to erase that dark stain on human history.

    I still haven't decided what I want to do with this coin. For a tiny, little piece of metal, it certainly has stirred some emotions. Perhaps that was its fate: To fall into my hands and be the topic of discussion on this forum.

    I know that for some of you reading this, the topic of evil Nazis wasn't anywhere on your agenda until you read this thread.... :)
     
  11. JBK

    JBK Coin Collector

    If only “sinless” people can cast the first stone, then that means no one can condemn Nazi Germany, is that it?

    I do not mean this to sound like a personal attack, but this line of reasoning is monumentally offensive to me. Living in Germany, I have seen it made a few times. Some Germans focus on some aspect of US history that is regrettable and seek to make their own reputation better by condemning the US. To me, this is a form of moral relativism and historical revisionism, which results in denial of the extremity of the atrocities. Nothing that the US has ever done remotely compares to what the Nazis did.

    That is why I like the coins from these era as history lessons. Swastika coins, Polish ghetto coins, post war emergency money. It all tells the tales of the past. If you are an expert in these coin-related fields, you are also something of an historian.
     
  12. sylvester

    sylvester New Member


    That's only because the events are within living memory, how many know about the massacres of Jews in the medieval/early modern period? Say England in 1290 when the whole Jewish population was evicted.

    Although i'm not Jewish myself my great aunt was a German/Polish Jew who fled Nazi Germany, the rest of her family perished. So actually going out and collecting these coins for me is a way of defying the whole Nazi agenda... Hitler/Himmler would turn in their graves if they knew someone who was related to a Jew were actually going out and collecting their coins in this manner, and there's nothing they can do about it.
     
  13. chrisild

    chrisild Coin Collector

    No doubt about the latter. I fully agree, and no serious historian would doubt that. But this "relativist" position that you mention is mostly heard, from my experience, as a reaction to a certain kind of American patriotism which often turns into, or maybe only sounds like, offensive self-righteousness.

    As for "swastika coins" being illegal in Germany, that is a mere myth as others have pointed out. If a non-European seller does not want to sell them to customers here, that is his/her business decision and does not have anything to do with legal restrictions. What I could imagine, however, is that some are just overcautious - after all, selling "non-historic" nazi items such as newly made Hitler medals could be considered nazi propaganda (supporting an anticonstitutional organization) which is against the law here.

    Nazi coins are fortunately fairly common if one collects by type only, like I do. Frankly, I would feel uncomfortable if I had to pay a premium price for some unattractive swastika piece only to fill a "hole" in my collection. There are so many nice coins out there ;-)

    Christian
     
  14. chrisild

    chrisild Coin Collector

    Guess you have not followed similar discussions about the very same subject in this forum. Which is basically fine, nobody has to, of course. Also, I think that most of the previous debates were in the World Coins area.

    Christian
     
  15. JBK

    JBK Coin Collector

    Actually, in my experience (which may be fart more limited than yours, granted), it is just the opposite, at least in terms of what sets me off. I think there are many people in Germany ready to make themselves feel better by pointing the finger at someone else. The problem is, they should not have to blame someoneelse to make themselves feel less guilt about something that happened before they were born. (Of course there is plenty of anti-Americanism in Europe independent of this).

    In any case, I hate to ruin the political discussions with a question about coins, but there are two things I have wondered:

    First, are most (all) Nazi coins truly rare in Uncirculated condition (I have heard they are)? Second, where did all the Nazi coins – especially silver – come from recently? It seems that hoards are available now. I was wondering if they were somehow hoarded by the Eastie German government and sold off in recent years.

    In any case, there are lots of high grade silver coins with lots of luster still available.
     
  16. chrisild

    chrisild Coin Collector

    Guess that our experiences are simply different, and not more or less limited. (Cute typo above, by the way. :D ) I do find it somewhat offensive when somebody tells me his/her country is the best and greatest in the world, "preferably" when combined with a somewhat limited knowledge of the rest of the world. In some cases this offensive attitude may be deliberate; just as there is some anti-Americanism in Europe, there is some suprematism in the US which in effect is anti-European or directed against specific parts of Europe. In other cases that attitude has nothing to do whatsoever with intentionally insulting others but still comes across as such.

    (This is not specific to Americans, by the way. If a German says, in some other country, that things should be done this or that way, that will not really increase his or her popularity.)

    Don't have an answer to the second question. As for the first one, some nazi silver coins are indeed rare in unc., for example those with the Potsdam Garrison Church (lots of empty space!) while others are not. As far as I know, many people hoarded them when WW2 started. Some coins are rare due to the mintage, others (notably nickel pieces) were considered important raw material by the government. Apparently nickel was more "war relevant" than silver ...

    Christian
     
  17. JBK

    JBK Coin Collector

    I know that some people like that Potsdam coin, but to me there IS way too much empty space. Looks too much like a medal to me. I still own a couple though.

    I do like the Hindenburg silver, though.

    I assumed that silver was hoarded, but there always seem to be people with piles of them for sale. I assume that they came from somewhere fairly recently.

    I do know that right after the Berlin wall fell, allsorts of collector firearms started coming out of Eastern Germany, such as WWII Lugers, etc., that the government had just been warehousing,. I suspect that the same might have happened with silver coins (although I can not explain why they would have saved copper or zinc ones.

    We did have a collection at work to get all old national coins right before the euro came in, and we cashed them in and donated the money to charity. An old Nazi 1 pfennig found its way into the collection box (I liberated it, though).
     
  18. chrisild

    chrisild Coin Collector

    The design with the church and the date I like, except that the occasion is nothing to proud of - on the contrary. The version that has just the church and the mintmark on the obverse is a little strange indeed. (By the way, that church is now being rebuilt. I don't really like that, but maybe I would think differently about it if I lived in Potsdam.)

    The Hindenburg coin is OK within the limits set by the new government: "Fraktur" instead of "Antiqua" types, and (in the second version) the wreath with the swastika below the eagle ... As for that WW2 stuff from the GDR, I don't know about it. But that does not mean much, or rather it means that you may very well be right :)

    Christian
     
  19. JBK

    JBK Coin Collector

    What church/date thing? I am not aware of that one.

    I am also not aware of two Hindenburg types, except maybe one with and one without the twisted cross.
     
  20. chrisild

    chrisild Coin Collector

    The Potsdam Garrison Church coin came in two versions. This is the earlier one, with a date:
    http://www.honscha.de/bilder/sonstige/17404g.jpg

    The later version looks exactly like the first one except there is no "21. März 1933" date. The first one was made in 1934 only, the second one (which is more common) in 1934 and 1935.

    As for the Hindenburg pieces, the obverse of both "versions" is the same. And yes, the earlier ones (5 RM, 1935-36) had the old eagle while the later ones (2 RM and 5 RM, 1936-39) had the eagle with the wreath/swastika on the reverse.

    Christian
     
  21. Arcturus

    Arcturus Junior Member

    I think I know where this "myth" comes from.

    Here in Germany it is illegal to display the swastika in certain instances. This is regulated by §86, Section 1 of the German Strafgesetzbuch. The exceptions are regulated under Section 3.

    According to Section 1 it is for instance illegal to allow access to propaganda materials (e.g. swastika) publicly on data storage. This could be the idea behind Ebay's policy. Exceptions are for instance allowed if the propaganda material is stored and made publicly available for research.

    Sometimes you can therefore see pictures e.g. of nazi coins on which the swastika is censored.
     
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