I have had some help from members on some of these medals . . .but woeld greatly appreciate additional information on the medals I have attached. Due to the file limitation I have only attached 2 medals. I wil sent another post with 2 additional medals.
Struck in West Germany around 1960, they have denominations so technically they are coins not medals. However, none of the grading services will slab them, or at least the one I have, even though many are listed in the Unusual Coins of The World catalog. Essentially, they are bullion pieces. Some of them have better art work than others. I've always thought the portrait on this Queen Elizabeth issue was great, better than the British issues in my opinion.
:thumb: I too like the Brithish issues!!! There a few Brithish that are 10kt Gold I think it was the" St Thomas is were 10 kt Gold coin 1974-1977 ?? If there 500 noted on rev there 10kt
I remember this website on those coins being posted in ebay listing a while back. Had some nice pics here it is: http://www.aureus-magnus.com/index.html
Some nice designs there, yes. But if I had pieces like that made and used a denomination - say, "1 Fantasius" - for them, would that make them coins? Don't think so. Sure, Graul "issued" them because he supported some kind of world gold standard, but these pieces were private products which have never been used as coins. Christian
Actually, right now, there are probably a lot of Greeks wishing they had adopted the Fantasius instead of the Euro. But I hadn't thought about that, the denomination may be close to a Ducat or Dukat, but a Dukaten isn't a real monetary unit.
Fyi in the bay two of the coins in the set Nefertiti 1961 1 Ducat and Olympia 1960 both sold today for 20%+ premium.
Sure, many people in Greece now wish their government and its helpers such as Goldman Sachs had not cheated so badly before the country was admitted into the euro area in 2001. Then they would not have been able to join the currency union which may have been better for both the country and the euro. Except that these are fairly moot points these days. As for the "dukaten" name, of course a Dukat (plural "Dukaten") used to be a real unit ... until the mid-19th century. My point was just that these issues have never been coins. By the way, the very same Werner Graul also worked as a graphic artist. His most famous poster he created in the mid-1920s, for Fritz Lang's movie "Metropolis": http://www.dhm.de/ausstellungen/bildzeug/s64b.html During the nazi years he published some works about Germanic pagan heroism, e.g. http://files.homepagemodules.de/b525721/f4t98p145n3.jpg In the mid-1950s he started designing and issuing those "Aureus Magnus" medals. Christian
