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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;MIGuy, post: 25304774, member: 116145&quot;]I have some nice rolls of BU Rhodesian pennies and have purchased some large lots of mixed Rhodesian coins - I do have some silver proofs, but the gold is out of my budget.&nbsp; A bit of history - starting with Cecil Rhodes.&nbsp; Cecil Rhodes came to South Africa in 1869 at age 16, the son of an English vicar, with the hope the climate would help his poor health.&nbsp; In 1870 diamonds had been discovered around Kimberly on a farm and miners took over the area, including young Cecil.&nbsp; He gradually took over the diamond claims at Kimberly and formed a near monopoly of diamond mining and the diamond trade, forming De Beers Consolidated Mines (with a partner).&nbsp; He became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony but was ousted during the first Boer War (with neighboring Afrikaner colonies)&nbsp; He was brilliant and complicated (and racist) and he died young of heart problems that plagued him his entire life.&nbsp; Rhodesia came to be named for him because of his stature and he did own large parcels of property there and built a house that is still preserved as a hotel.&nbsp; The Rhodes Scholarship was endowed in his will.</p><p><br /></p><p>I have a lot of African coins - and I love the history of coins from countries that no longer exist (Lundy, Burma, Hawaii, Swaziland, etc)&nbsp; Now as to me, when I was a kid I was fascinated with Africa - it may have started with Edgar Rice Burroughs and Tarzan comics, but I was a serious student (occasionally) and made a study of it.&nbsp; I became a foreign exchange student to South Africa (this is in the years after 1981 when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe) and I was in love with a &quot;Zimmer&quot; - who&#039;s parents had left then Rhodesia some years before.&nbsp; I later studied abroad in college in West Africa, and I warn my kids if I don&#039;t get grandkids I may go live like a king on the beach in Senegal half the year (Senegal is amazing!).&nbsp; I think that&#039;s honestly a good part of the basis for my interest in Rhodesian coins - they remind me of a lovely young woman I once knew.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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