World Coin News March 2022

Visitors to the April 2022 Central States Numismatic Society (www.CentralStatesNumismaticSociety.org) convention will find an expanded bourse area with more dealers and more exhibits. Additional dealer tables are now available, according to CSNS convention organizers. The show will be conducted April 27-30, 2022 at the Renaissance Hotel and Convention Center, 1551 Thoreau Dr., in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, Ill. The convention facility and hotel has been the site of CSNS conventions in recent years. “We’ve had extremely high demand for tables for the upcoming April show, so we have added additional space in the convention hall and redesigned the floor plan to add more than 80 additional tables. This is shaping up to be the largest Central States convention in over 30 years and could be the largest in its 83-year history,”…

DETECTORIST FINDS RARE GOLD COIN “Find a penny, pick it up, all day long, you’ll have good luck. Pass that penny to a friend; your penny luck will never end,” goes a well-known children’s rhyme. Armed with a metal detector, Michael Leigh-Mallory may want to argue that a found penny might offer a lot more than what a friend could do for you should you have given the penny to that friend. In late September 2021 Leigh-Mallory found one of only eight known gold penny coins of Henry III using his metal detector. On Jan. 23 the coin was sold through an online auction conducted by Spink and Son auctioneer Gregory Edmund. Edmund reported the coin realized £540,000, which is about $728,700 U.S. Leigh-Mallory is fortunate in more than one way. Under the…

LOOKING AT THINGS from a Tibetan point of view, the modern era began with the installation of the 14th Dalai Lama, who was installed in 1940 and is still in place. From a Chinese point of view, Tibet was a Chinese territory that had wandered away, politically speaking, and was brought back where it belonged in 1959, and that’s the beginning of the “modern era.” We have to keep this double viewpoint in mind as we consider Tibet. The whole time those coins we try to collect were being made, China was saying that the Tibetan government was illegal, and Tibet was part of China. They just weren’t able to do anything about it until 1950. There is a Sino-Tibetan history of the period, and there is an internal Tibetan history of the…

THE FINAL YEARS of Empress Elizabeth, who reigned from November 1741 to December 1761, were full of history. This was the time of the Seven Years’ War in Europe and the French & Indian War in Colonial America. The numismatic scene, to the modern collector, is just as interesting because of the many changes that occurred. During the early to mid-1750s the government had engaged in intensive discussions and investigation of the factors that affected the monetary system. Count Peter Ivanovich Shuvalov then made several detailed proposals for improvement. The most prominent of these concerned the gold and copper coinages, but silver also came in for its share of variety. The first major change in the silver coinage came with the striking of 5-kopeck pieces in 1755. This new coin was authorized…

Is there a reason U.S. coins never use some of the fun colors or are even bi-metallic like a lot of the world new issues have done? The United States is amazingly behind on technology regarding both coins and bank notes. This involves not only color enhancement capabilities and ringed bimetal coins, but the many counterfeit prevention technologies being applied to bank notes elsewhere in the world. We have had a single ringed bimetal coin and a single color enhanced coin, neither of which was meant to be used in circulation. What is the easiest way to look up a coin you’ve never seen before-such as you’ve been handed a coin and have no idea what it is? If it is a U.S. coin of which you speak I would read the legends…

This is Austria’s year. Not only did Austrian Mint coins claim an impressive three Coin of the Year (COTY) category wins in the 2022 awards competition, but the country has also earned top honors as Coin of the Year Champion. The winning coin is a gold 100-euro marking “The Gold of the Pharaohs,” the second coin of the Austrian Mint’s “The Magic of Gold” series that traces the mysterious nature of gold in ancient cultures. The coin was named Best Gold Coin in the awards program’s first round of competition. The Coin of the Year program, now in its 39th year, is an internationally conducted competition presented by World Coin News to recognize outstanding coin design and innovation worldwide. The 2022 program, sponsored by The Journal of East Asian Numismatics, honors coins…