Rare Error Dump 15 Pence on Market

A few days ago I got a call from M.R. Roberts, long time Austarlian coin dealer of Wynyard Coin Center fame. Roberts remains in the thick of the Australian coin market, although many things have changed over the years. His shop at 7 Hunter Arcade in Sydney, NSW is a must for most numismatists in the area or passing through.

Roberts called to relay some key information for the Standard Catalog of World Coins 1901-2000 edition and also to let me know about a special Dump coin that had surfaced. 

A 15 Pence, nicknamed a Dump, is one of the earliest of Australian circulating coins. It is a circular center cut from a Spanish or Spanish Colonial eight reales, which has been countermarked with the legend: NEW SOUTH WALES/1813 with a crown in the center on the obverse, plus denomination FIFTEEN PENCE seperated by a dot on the reverse.

The remaining outer circle of the eight reales was also countermarked and circulated as a 5 Shilling, nicknamed a Holey Dollar. These two coin types were the first circulating coins specifically produced for Australian circulation. Before the Holey Dollar and Dump were instituted in New South Wales, Australia used various Spanish silver and just about anything that came their way. Keeping coins in circulation was near to impossible, as good silver usually made it's way to better markets.

In 1812, Governor Lachlan Macquarie found an opportunity in a shipment of some 40,000 Spainsh eight reales. He used the cut and countermarking method, which was gaining popularity as a way to keep coins in circulation within area. By uniformly mutilating the well accepted Spanish eight reales and tying them to a specific region, cut and countermarked coins simply became less attractive to shipping merchants, allowing them to remain in the area, promoting better internal commerce and exchange.

The success of Macquarie's plan was immediately evident and the Holey Dollar and Dump remained a mainstay of Australian circulating coinage until 1829, when British coinage was generally adopted and the cut and countermarked coins were quickly removed from circulation by revoking their former legal tender status. For the next 20 years, about the only place you could find a Holey Dollar or Dump was in Tasmania, where they remained popular.

Survival rate on the 15 Pence or Dump is a bit better than the Holey Dollars, but both types and most all hosts are considered quite rare today. An average Dump retails near $30,000, with Holey Dollars going for upwards of three times that.

Roberts special Dump, which surfaced recently, is a error piece struck 15% off center. This kind of mistrike is quite unusual and a arre find for the specialist. Roberts is offering the coin for sale at $75,000.

For more information on Holey Dollars and Dumps check out the various books by Dr. W. J. D. Mira, including The Holey Dollars of New South Wales and Coinage and Currency in New South Wales 1788-1829.

Lithuanian Coins Always On The Rise

Tight markets with limited supply and broad collector demand always make for good appreciation. One of the best modern examples comes from Lithuania, where the art of matching mintages to collector base has become quite highly refined.

The Bank of Lithuania limits their commemorative new issue program to a reasonable number of types each year and keeps their mintages close enough to satisfy their countries active collectors, while allowing for a healthy upward swing in the secondary market. If you collect Lithuanian coins, you probably know exactly what I mean, once the Bank sells out, you will have to work hard and pay dearly to get an example on the seconary market.

This 2005 silver proof 50 Litu, KM#144, is a perfect example. I don't recall the exact issue price, but would guess it to have been around $50. The catalog value rose up to $75, but that may have been conservative guess work too, as the very limited mintage of 1,500 would have meant that this type would not generally have been available at all after the Bank of Lithuania had finished primary sales.

Just this month however, I noted one selling on eBay and watched as bidders drove it up to a closing price of $325. That's what you get with a ravenous collector base, intelligent coin program decisions, attractive designs and carefully thought out mintage limits.

Other examples of recent rising prices in Lithuania include:

1998 10 Litu, copper-nickel proof, KM#115, former $30 = now $70

1999 10 Litu, copper-nickel proof, KM#116, former $20 = now $75

1995 50 Litu silver proof, KM#98, former $150 = now $200

1997 50 Litu silver proof, KM#105, former $150 = now $350

1999 50 Litu silver proof, KM#119, former $55 = now $200

Sources For Collecting South African Coinage

After more than 20 years of work as numismatic market analyst for the Standard Catalog of World Coins series, one bit of advice I can surely give budding collectors is: educate yourself before spending your money. In the old days, we used to say, "Buy the book before the coin", which was good advice, but in todays fast paced world you can do so much more.

For instance, if you want to begin collecting South African coins, you can start by learning about the home market. Check out the South African auction site Bid or Buy and see how they do the eBay thing on their home turf. Bid or Buy has nearly 3,500 listings in their coin catagory as of this posting and most sellers will ship to Europe and the United States. Take time to view the SA Mint site and see what they are producing today. Check around the Internet and see what South Africa has to offer in the way of coin knowledge, specialty references, websites and blogs.

Then see what the Australian, European and U.S. markets are up to. Check out Noble Numismatics auctions, as they often have South African coins and medals in their sales. Take a look at the Dix Noonan Webb auction site, where the South African proof sets I mentioned in my last posting are being sold today. Get on the mailing list or check out the World Coin News ads for Dennis Gill, the Garden City, NY coin dealer who has over 80 classic South African coins for sale on his latest price list.

Of course, using a Standard Catalog, DVD or the NumisMaster website, is a fine grounded base to start from, but knowledge is not a single celled creature, it is always growing and evolving. We have many experts who help us to grow the Standard Catalog of World Coins and NumisMaster and if you seek to gain knowledge of your own, perhaps some day you will be one of those experts too.

Polish Mathematicians Outwit German Enigma

A year or so ago I got on a Submarine movie kick. I watched Das Boot, The Hunt For Red October, K-19: The Widowmaker and U-571. All great movies which I would recommend, but one caveat I have learned about U-571 is that it lacks a bit of credibility for straying so far from its historical basis.

U-571 portrays a U.S submarine crew capturing a German Enigma Encrytion Machine. Unfortunately there never was a U-571 sub, or an American crew that early in WWII that captured one of these coding devices. Later in the war of course U.S. ships did capture at least one Enigma Encryption Machine, which is on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago along with the German submarine, which was also captured by American servicemen. Other museums also have Enigma Machines and other materials on display, as we are all fascinated by the history of this big little corner of WWII.

Earlier it was the British who got their hands on Enigma Machines and began the work of cracking them at their Benchley Park facility. Mathematicians and cryptanalysts like Alan Turing did an excellent job of breaking the codes, which in turn helped the British Government to decode German communications.

Most of this history is fairly well known, due to the efforts of web based historians like Tony Sales, who have done a great job of telling the now declassified secret stories of codes and code breaking during WWII. Even so, there are still a few lesser known tales to tell, like the that of American engineers in Dayton, Ohio who built an advanced bombes decoding machine or the Polish Cipher Bureau mathematicians Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski, who first cracked the German Enigma Encryption Machine back in 1932 and turned the machine and their work results over to the Allies in France in 1939, at great person risk to themselves even as their own country was overrun by the Germans.

In fact I was pleased to see recently that the Polish Mint was honoring those humble individuals and their almost superhuman efforts on two coins. Both coins have legends noting the 75th Anniversary of the Breaking of the Enigma Codes. The 8g 100 Zlotych gold coin has a mintage limit of 8,000 pieces and sells for $369.95 from Talisman Coins, the U.S distributor for the Polish Mint. The Nordic Gold (copper-aluminum-tin-zinc) 2 Zlote coin is less expensive at $4.95 and even offers us the last names of the cryptanalysts who cracked the Enigma and that's a honor I am sure they would be proud to see come to light.