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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cplradar, post: 7853750, member: 108985&quot;]Recently, we aquired the 1972 50FR W. African States FAO.&nbsp; This coin was mostly stumbled upon, as one of set that included a Uragay coin that we were looking for.&nbsp; The set that I obtained was Page 2.A of the FAO coin sets.&nbsp; The 50 Frank coin stands out among its peers, not just because of its condition, and the toning which was lost evenutally to the conservation by ANACS, but the truly unique design.&nbsp; While the reverse, with a 50 Fr value stated upon it with a series of local food crops (,peanuts, rice, cacao and coffee), the reverse was a stunning representation of statues of a very stylized sawfish that traditionally was used to weigh valuables (gold according to th Europeans, but that is contended in the literature).&nbsp; At first I thought it was a mask, but research lead me to understnad that this was not the case.&nbsp; The sawfish itself is a powerful cult figure in the Akan and Baoule people of West Africa.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://images.mrbrklyn.com/coins/food_for_all_1972/.cache/640x618-50_francs_1972_West%20African_Union_o.png" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /> </p><p><img src="http://images.mrbrklyn.com/coins/food_for_all_1972/.cache/640x632-50_francs_1972_West%20African_Union_r.png" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /> </p><p><br /></p><p>Fish mythology among the Akan and Baoule people of West Africa is old and deep.&nbsp; Much has been written on the statues and the myths of of the sawfish.&nbsp; They are covered in 1968 by Albert Ott, in his report preserved in the Historical Society of Ghana, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/i40078705" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/i40078705" rel="nofollow">Vol. 9 (1968)</a>, pp. 17-42 (26 pages).&nbsp;&nbsp; It is hard to understand the nature of weights used in comerce from the context of the West Africans.&nbsp; They had a highly proverbized langauge, and the familiar shape of a weigh, that of a mythological god at that like the sawfish, integrates itself into the very daily speach of the poeple of West Africa.&nbsp; This hightens the assocation of this coin to real value.</p><p><br /></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]7o_mxI2P-So[/MEDIA]</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://smafathers.org/museum/ghana-weights-for-measuring-gold-dust/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://smafathers.org/museum/ghana-weights-for-measuring-gold-dust/" rel="nofollow">http://smafathers.org/museum/ghana-weights-for-measuring-gold-dust/</a></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1352958[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Mythology involving fish and sawfish specifically can be explored to understand the importance of this symbolism to the peoples of West Africa.&nbsp; We have this quote:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1352971[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Sawfish were very central to the national and cultural identity of West African Cultures, and attached to concepts of fertility and prosperity.&nbsp; It is like the American Bald Eagle and the Turkey together.&nbsp; Yet the last sawfish native to West Africa was last seen about 2004, which is sad for for them, and worthy a whole other discussion (one done in academic literature).</p><p><br /></p><p>The coin was conserved by ANACS and returned a healthy MS66</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://images.mrbrklyn.com/coins/FOA_Set/.cache/1600x1066-IMG_8187.JPG" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /> </p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://images.mrbrklyn.com/coins/FOA_Set/.cache/1600x1066-IMG_8186.JPG" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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