Romania borders with Hungary & Serbia to the west. It borders Ukraine & Moldavia to the north-east, and Bulgaria to the south (and just below that is Greece). Transylvania of Dracula’s fame is located in present day Romania. At the end of the World War I, Transylvania united with the Kingdom of Romania. After World War II, parts of Romania’s territories were occupied by the Soviet Union and Romania became a socialist republic. Today, Romania has joined the European Union and they will soon be using the Euro (in about 4 years I think). According to Wikipedia, Romania is now an upper-middle income country. My new coin is a 5 Lei dated 1881. It is not a rare coin but I believe that it is quite rare to find an EF example that hasn't been harshly cleaned. The man on the obverse is King Carol I of Romania. He was a German prince that was elected prince (Domnitor) of Romania in 1866. He was proclaimed king in 1881, which is also the date on my coin. His full name was Karl Eitel Friedrich Zephyrinus Ludwig von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen He was born in Germany and died in Romania. Here is a link if you want to learn more about good king Carol I: http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/141249 The following information is hearsay from my trip to Romania earlier this year. I hope that some of our CT historians can add to this Romanian story and please POST YOUR COINS FROM ROMANIA. I understand that Dracula was an iron fisted ruler that would provide gruesome punishment for anyone that committed a crime. I was told that in his day, you could leave a bag of gold coins on the sidewalk and it would still be there the next day because nobody would dare steal them. The oldest modern human remains in Europe were discovered in Romania. The remains are more than 40,000 years old. My new Romanian coin is only 112 years old today. Post ‘em if you got ‘em.
Here are a couple casino chips from my visit to Romania. We deposited some money at the casino before leaving the country. We walked around a city park lake in Bucharest on a warm sunny day and about everyone we saw was smiling. Thanks for letting me share & PLEASE POST YOUR COINS FROM ROMANIA.
Some neat pieces there. Unfortunately today's coins from Romania have very sober and not exactly creative designs. The applies to the circulation pieces; there are only four anyway (1 ban, 10-20-50 bani). The 1 leu and above are paper money. Romanian coins for collectors are often nicely designed but have extremely low mintages - 500 or 1000 maybe. Since you mentioned "Dracula", well, last year they minted some collector coins featuring him. These pieces (1 leu/tombac, 10 lei/silver, 500 lei/gold) were issued to commemorate the 550th anniversary of Bucharest's being first mentioned in writing. That was in 1459 and thus under his rule. See http://www.bnro.ro/Numismatica-726.aspx?arch=1. Christian
Also, while today's coins have what I consider "normal" denominations, Romania had a 15 bani coin in the 1960s and 70s: http://worldcoingallery.com/countries/img5/148-93a.jpg Christian
I brought back samples of the modern Romanian coins. They are functional but I must agree that they are sober and not exactly creative designs. I should post a couple images here later tonight.
These are samples of the modern coins I brought back from Romania. The older coins are much more interesting to me.
