Numismatik-Cafe

I was among friends talking about our favorite 20th century silver coin. Here was my contribution, and anyone who wants to add a European candidate (since that's the heading here) is more than welcome.

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Some days my favorite is America’s Walking Liberty half-dollar of 1916-47; other days my favorite is the American Standing Liberty quarter-dollar of 1916-30, but there are many days—and today is one—that my favorite 20th Century silver coin is the Italian 2-lire of 1914-17.

I had never seen these coins before I saw this one at school in Napoli when I was a kid. I bought it on the spot, and used my week’s school lunch money to do it. Seventy-five cents American, and a few hungry afternoons—a small price to pay for a beauty like this.

v.

A truly beautiful coin. I would like also to see the obverse.

Best regards,
Docisam

Sure. (I should have posted it as a matter of course.)

The obverse of these coins--I think--was like their reverse, a great improvement on the previous "Quadrigas" of 1908-12.

v.

I hope it will be allowed to post more than one coin, as I both collect the coins of the German Empire of 1871 and norwegian coins of the same period, I at least have to candidats. The norwegen one though has to be photographed again, so I start with Germany :

To mark the centennial of Mansfeld belonging to Prussia this commemorative 3 - mark was struck. Origionally there where plans to strike 700.000 specimens, but due to the war situaution only 30.000 where allowed. What makes this coin so speciall to me ( besides of its beauty ) are the cicumstances wich it was produced under. The silver for this issue actually came from the mines at Mansfeld, where prospectoring had a long history back to the time b. C. This makes the Mansfeld - coin propably the last german " Ausbeute - Münze ". I am not sure if you have an equivalent to this phrase in english, but " Ausbeutemünze " meens that a coin is struck from silver or gold from a certain mine, or in case og gold from a certain river.
The obverse is depicting St. George and the dragon, wich was a traditional motive on Mansfeld coins, on the obverse you can see a modernized eagle. This modell was used on some commemorative issues only, but one can only guess if this is what Empire coins at a given point might have looked like without a war.

Pay attention to the miners tools wich are used as deviders for the inscription on the obverse. Those where added on the initiative by dr. Vogelsang , who was director of the Mansfeld- mines. Vogelsang also was a devoted numismatist and collector of " Ausbeutemünzen " , and a specimen of the Mansfeld 3 mark was in his collection , sold on a auction at the auctionhouse of Riechmann at Halle in 1925.

Hier die absolute Lieblingsmünze meines zweiten Sammelgebietes. Nach der Unabhängigkeit von Schweden 1905 und der Wahl Prinz Carls von Dänemark zum König von Norwegen ( Edward VII war sein Schwiegervater, das war zu dem Zeitpunkt seine grösste Qualität ), gab man sich in Kongsberg viel Mühe, eine Münzserie zu entwerfen, die der Selbständigkeit der alten- jungen Nation auch auf numismatischem Gebiete Rechnung tragen sollte. Nachdem 1906 und 1907 Bronzemünzen im Stil der unter Oscar II geprägten Münzen geprägt wurden, kam es ab 1908 zur Ausgabe der neuen Kursmünzenserie in den Werten 1,2,5, 10, 25 und 50 Øre, sowie 1 und 2 Kronen. 1910 folgten Goldmünzen zu 10 und 20 Kronen.
Die Münzen, die vom Hauptgraveur der Münze in Kongsberg, Ivar Throndsen, entworfen wurden, vereinen in ihrer Gestaltung Elemente des Jugensstils und Details der Münzen des norwegischen Mittelalters. Der Bezug auf das Mittelalter war wichtig, da so unterstrichen wurde, dass Norwegen eine christliche Nation war.
Auf den Kleinmünzen findet sich das Dreieinigkeitszeichen das auf zahleichen Pfennigen des 10. und 11. Jahrhunderts zu sehen war, auf den Goldmünzen ist der auf dem Drachen stehende St. Olav wiedergegeben, der so auf Schillingstücken des Trondheimer Erzbischofs Erik Valkendorf( 1510 - 22 ) abgebildet ist.
Der Wappenlöwe, der in einen spitz zulaufenden Schild gestellt ist, entstammt dem Pfennig von Eirik Magnusson ( 1280 - 99 ) und lehnt sich damit an die erste bekannte Darstellung des norwegischen Wappens an.
Auf dem Zweikronenstück ist der Wappenlöwe umgeben von den Wappen der ( damals ) sechs Bischofssitze. Von links nach rechts : Kristiania, Trondhjem, Tromsø, Hamar, Kristiansand, Bergen.
Das Zweikronenstück wurde in dieser Form nur 1908 in einer Auflage von 200.000 Stück geprägt, 1909 wurde das Königsportrait überarbeitet, da es mit seiner Höhe eine Massenproduktion erschwerte. Mit flacherem Relief wurde von 1910 bis 1917 jeweils 150.000 bis 375.000 Ex geprägt, dann bereitete der Zerfall der skandinavischen Münzunion der Grossilberausmünzung ein Ende. Aus dem Jahr 1909 sind ca 20 als Proben anerkannte Exemplare mit flachem Relief bekannt, zuletzt wurde im vergangenen Herbst eine solche Probe für ca 20.000 Euro versteigert, die Preise für die herkömmlichen Exemplare sind zum Glück humaner.

Meinen persönlichen Favoriten hatte ich vielleicht schon mal vorgestellt, dieser irische Schilling:
Grüße, KarlAntonMartini

Sehr schön, Eure Silberlinge. Ich habe zwar keinen Favoriten, aber diesen hier finde ich ganz schön, aus Ungarn:
Gruß ischbierra

There's always a place for Hungary's 1938 5-pengo in a gathering like this.

Anyone have a closer acquaintance with these coins, like their circulating history, if any? Or if they were sold at a premium? They seemed to have survived in large numbers--any insights as to how? And etc.

v.

The story of Ireland's 1928 coin design competition is well known here, as was Publio Morbiducci's participation in the process. Nevertheless, it really stopped me cold when I first encountered this terrific Irish "Bull" shilling as an Italian pattern coin, especially as it wasn't attributed to Morbiducci--and especially as it had been modified: the denomination had been removed from the exergue and replaced with a fasces. Symbolic meaning aside, the resulting emptiness of the exergue and the spartan verticality of the device within that emptiness, well, it didn't even come together in a design sense.

So forget the pattern--and I wish I could(!)-the Irish shilling speaks for itself.

v.

@kronerogøre….

Thanks for the terrific coins and for their backgrounds. Fun to read. And thanks for the word/concept, too, Ausbeutemünze. I’m not conversant enough with American gold coins to know whether we can attribute certain specific coins to specific mines (seems like some of the Charlotte and Dahlonega coins might stand a chance), but there is something somewhat similar in the 1848 quarter-eagles counterstamped with “CAL.” to indicate the gold used to coin them was mined in California.

I do have an entry in my notebook that touches on the subject of metal from particular mines:

x: This 1874a German 10 pfennig piece was made in Berlin in just the second year of the new imperial coinage. Germany’s decision to forsake silver for the gold standard had caused severe dislocations in world currencies. The arrows on U.S. subsidiary silver of 1873 4, for example, are partially attributable to the wholesale melting of the old German state coinage and the subsequent fall in silver prices it helped to cause. (That, and to the worldwide trend to metric weights.) But it wasn’t all pain and anguish for American metal producers. Some of the nickel in these and other German minors of the period comes from Joseph Wharton’s nickel mine in Pennsylvania. Some of the German marks he earned endowed the Wharton School of Business.()

Finally, on the broader subject of sourcing coinage metal, below is a somewhat better example of my contribution to the group, the Italian 2-lire of 1914-17. Very many of these coins were withdrawn and melted by the authorities, with their metal reappearing as new small-size 5-lire coins beginning in 1926.

Thanks again for the background info.

v.