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The U.S. Mint still produces gold coins, like last year’s Saint-Gaudens and Buffalo coins or the First Spouses coins, but since the elimination of the gold standard there haven’t been any truly legal tender gold coins in the United States.   For example, the First Spouses coins all have a face value of $10, but weigh in at a ½oz of gold worth over $500.  Even though these coins are called “legal tender”, there’s no actual intent to use them at the grocery store – they’re value is in their gold content, and their appeal to collectors and investors alike is measured in the weight of their gold.  While the gold standard was dying in the late 1960s, however, one country was bouying its currency with cold, hard precious metal.

Along the edge of a prehistoric lake near what is now Johannesburg, South Africa, the water and silt left a long curving deposit of gold called the “Golden Arc”.   In 1886, gold was discovered in an area called the Witwatersrand basin, making South Africa one of the largest gold producers in the world.  Gold remained a major part of South Africa’s economy and coinage throughout colonialism and wars, and at the time the Republic of South Africa was established the new form of currency was called the Rand, a shortening of the name of the gold-rich Witwatersrand.

As world dependence on gold as a form of currency was waning, South Africa was determined to continue to use their locally-produced gold as money.   In 1967, they took a unique approach:  international currencies were being devalued or were fluctuating, so the new gold coins would not include a face value at all.   The Krugerrand, a combination of the name of President Paul Kruger on its obverse and the name of the currency at the time,  displayed only its weight in gold rather than a monetary value, and were distributed as a true circulating coin, full legal tender for any transaction.   The coin wasn’t intended entirely for internal purposes, though: although other nations had laws against private individuals owning gold bullion, citizens could legally purchase and own foreign gold coins.   The Krugerrand was a circulating gold coin, despite its bullion face value, so it was the perfect way for private investors to convert their fluctuating dollars, pounds, and francs for gold.   Foreign investors and collectors purchased thousands of Krugerrands as an investment, and along with locals using it as currency the mint was producing hundreds of thousands of Krugerrands from South African gold a year.

The growing international opposition to apartheid, however, began to sour the Krugerrand as an investment.  In particular, the United States cut off the purchase of Krugerrands in 1986, and the presence of U.S.-made gold coins for investment – partly to compete with the Krugerrand – reduced the number of the South African gold coins in America.   This blackout continued until 1994, with the end of apartheid and the release of sanctions against the country.

The one-ounce Krugerrand is the most recognizable of the South African gold coins, with millions having been produced since 1967 in their circulating form, and their value remains close to the spec value of gold.   Far less common are the rare Krugerrand proof coins, bearing the uncirculated mirror-like finish common to proof coins.   Only a few thousand proof  Krugerrands have been produced each year, and they bear a higher collectible value than their gold content.  The proof coins are also identifiable by their reeded edge:  the proofs have 220 serrations, while the circulating coins only have 180.  Beginning in 1980, fractional Krugerrands were minted in values of 1/2oz, 1/4oz, and 1/10oz for smaller transactions, and were also minted in both circulating bullion and proof condition.  Forgery is rampant in all sizes of the Krugerand, and lower-priced silver replicas are advertised as true Krugerrands when they are not, so great diligence is necessary to ensure a purchased Kruggerand is real.

In 1986, the centennial of the gold rush, South Africa began producing a new gold coin series.  The Protea, named for the flower on its obverse, is a commemorative gold coin honoring various important events in South African history on its reverse.   Like US bullion coins, the Protea have a face value much lower than the gold value, R25 for the 1oz coin and R5 on the 1/10oz coin, and they are available in both a standard finish and proof finish.  In 2005, the Natura series of gold coins were added, depicting the various fauna indigenous to South Africa.   The Natura coins, too, are available as both regular and proof, and have small face values: R100 for 1oz, R50 for 1/2oz, R20 for 1/4oz, and R10 for 1/10oz.  The Protea and Natura coins are more directly aimed at collectors, rather than gold investors, and their presentation is far more eye-catching than the Krugerrand.   As with other newer gold coins, the Protea and Natura are still valued close to the spec gold price, while the older Krugerrands – in particular the mirror-finish proofs – are beginning to grow in value as a collectible.

At 11am today, at El Pueblo De Los Angeles, the United States Postal Service will release this year’s contribution to the Lunar New Year postage stamp series, The Year of the Tiger.   The stamp was designed by USPS art director Ethel Kessler, with a painting by illustrator Kam Mak.  This year’s stamp displays several narcissus flowers, a plant associated with the Chinese New Year.   In the style of the other recent Chinese New Year stamps, the illustration includes a paper cutout sillhouette of a tiger by artist Clarence Lee, and the Chinese character for ‘tiger’ in by calligrapher Lau Bun.

Kam Mak was also the artist behind previous two stamps in the current series, and will continue through the rest of the series, to be completed in 2019.   The current 12-year lunar year cycle started  in 2008 with the Year of the Rat, and the USPS started off the series with an image of Chinese paper lanterns.  Last year, the Year of the Ox, was honored with a stamp depicting the head of a Chinese lion costume, both traditional fixtures of the Chinese New Year celebration.

Clarence Lee and Lau Bun, however, both already have a history with Lunar New Year postage stamps.  The first set of Chinese New Year stamps from the USPS was started in 1992, showcasing Lee’s paper-cut artwork and including calligraphy by Bun.   The first series of the twelve zodiac animals wrapped up in 2005, with a definitive reissue in 2006.  Comparing the detail in the current stamp and the artwork from the 1990s stamp set, it appears that the new designs recycle the previous artwork.   The 1990s series also started out of order:  the first stamp is the series was the 10th symbol in the lunar calendar, the Year of the Rooster, and continued through the Year of the Monkey, hence the three-year gap between the original series and the new series.   The 1990s Chinese New Year stamp is quite common, and assembling a complete set — all the original issues, the 2005 single-sheet commemorative release, plus the 2006 single-sheet re-issue — will not be a difficult prospect.  As for the new series, you’ll have to wait, a year at a time, but today is the day to get moving  if you’d like the Year of the Tiger with the First Day of Issue postmark.

Last Sunday, January 2nd, a Canadian penny was sold by Heritage Auctions for a record-breaking $402,500.  This was, of course, no ordinary Canadian penny, although at first glance few would know it.   Simply being a 1936 penny, bearing the profile of King George V, isn’t particularly remarkable, but one small feature is:  the dot.   The dot indicates that this particular penny, and its corresponding dime and quarter, were not quite what they appeared to be.

1936 opened with a tragedy for the United Kingdom: King George V passed away on January 20th, and his son, Edward, became King Edward VIII.   Edward had been a womanizer and caused scandal by being in the company of a married woman — and, in the end, Edward chose to give up the throne to marry his companion, abdicating the throne in December 1936.   Aside from the political and social effects of Edward VIII’s quick term as the “Rex et Indiae Imperator”, the Mints of the kingdom were sent reeling.    The Mint in England did manage to produce several coins with Edward’s profile, but Canada’s Mint was still producing coins with King George V on them, partly in honor of his memory, and partly because those were the only coining dies that were available.    During 1936, preparations had been made to mint Canadian coins with Edward’s profile, but his abdication threw a wrench into the plans.

1936 came to an end and the Canadian Mint hadn’t any new dies ready.   In order to continue to produce coins, the Mint decided they needed to use their existing dies, but they determined to give the coin an identifying mark to indicate these were, in fact, coins minted in 1937.    A small hole was drilled in the die, which would leave a small raised mark on the coin.   The “dot” was placed towards the bottom of the reverse, and the front remained the identical George V coins from previous years.   Several thousand pennies, dimes, and quarters were produced with the dot before the new dies were ready, but only the quarters had made it out to the street.   The remaining pennies, dimes, and quarters still at the Mint were destroyed, except for a few samples that ended up in the hands of collectors.

Currently, less than five each of the pennies and dimes are known to exist, and are believed to be the only ones that survived.    One of the three known “dot dimes” was sold as the same auction as the record-setting dot cent, and realized $184,000.  The dot quarters that had been distributed have mostly survived, although the majority are in circulated condition.   The quarters also naturally seem more worn than other 1936 quarters, because the dies were quite worn before they were put back into use as the dot-coin dies, so the detail and relief in the quarters is of a slightly poorer quality than a regular quarter of the same period.   Those quarters are the average collector’s primary chance to one one of these rare, historic coins, although there’s likely to be another opportunity to get a dot penny or dot dime sometime in the future.

Since 1956, diecast vehicles have been sold to children and collectors under the name Corgi.  Here in the United States, the scope of Corgi toys might not have shown up on the radar for a lot of kids — I was a Matchbox kid, myself — so I was impressed when I got a review copy of Corgi Toys, by David Cooke.   Corgi produced larger-scale vehicles than Matchbox, although they did include the smaller-scale size later, and the quality and style changed as the needs and desires of their customers grew over the years.

Cooke starts before the creation of the Corgi trade-name, tracing its origins to the Mettoy company in the 1930s.  After war-rationing of metal hampered the creation of metal car toys, the market grew and saw numerous competing companies fighting to make their toys more desirable to kids and collectors alike.   Cooke’s book covers a lot of ground in few words, giving a good timeline and overview of Corgi’s growth and change in the past eighty years, but is far from comprehensive.  The book is neither a reference nor a price guide, and feels more like a nice gift book for your friendly neighborhood toy car collector.  The limited text is made up for with a couple hundred photographs of various toys, most with their original packaging and accessories.   The photos are all well done, and nothing would be considered a poor quality collectible.  It also benefits from a handy index and two pages of “Further Reading” suggestions.

The photos are the book’s strongest points, and it’s too bad the book isn’t longer.  The Shire Library has produced a number of books appealing to collectors and kitsch fanatics alike.  All are thin and image-packed, and the Corgi Toys book is no exception.  The content’s quality and feel is similar to books from Taschen, but on a smaller scale.  The only place the book’s size has a slightly negative connotation is in the price – while I understand that 64  full-color glossy pages isn’t a cheap book to produce, the $12.95 pricetag seems a bit high for a thin paperback book.  That might encourage a gift-buyer to pick up a thicker, but lower quality, coffee-table photo book of toy cars simply because it carries a greater heft.   The tight focus on Corgi’s history, however, is the right fit for a book of this size, nicely balanced by a multitude of good images, so don’t be put off by the price; a Corgi collector will definitely enjoy Cooke’s summary of the Corgi toy car company’s history.

Corgi Toys, by David Cooke
ISBN 978-0-7478-0667-7
$12.95, 64 pages
Shire Library (Random House)

This month’s edition of Archaeology magazine has arrived, and in flipping through it an advertisement caught my eye.  It was an ad for a coin, which usually gets ignored, but this time it wasn’t some private-issue investment-grade metal nor some ‘clad’ reproduction.  Burnsville, MN company GovMint.com was offering over a thousand Columbian Half-Dollars, bought from a collector in Texas, all in excellent collectible condition.   It appears, if they can be believed, that these are the real deal, actual century-old silver coins minted for the Columbian Exposition.

Considering all the coins jingling around in people’s pockets, the average person might forget that coins have only recently been engraved with the heads of real people.   People did appear on coins, but their appearance was allegorical and not intended to be a real person.   It wasn’t until 1892 that a legal-tender silver U.S. coin would bear the image of a real person — and he wasn’t even American.   Chicago had been successful in their lobbying to host the 1893 Columbian Exposition, a huge fair commemorating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the Americas.   In order to help defray the costs of setting up and operating such an immense undertaking, the U.S. Government pledged $2.5 million in commemorative silver coins to the Exposition.   The bill authorizing the coins, approved in August 1892, declared five million of these half-dollars would be minted and delivered to Chicago, to be used to fund the Expo.   The Exposition had planned on opening in 1892, but was running behind schedule, and the Mint hadn’t any designs for the coin yet, so only 950,000 were produced in 1892, and the rest in 1893.   Columbus himself, obviously, would be displayed on the coin’s obverse.

The first problem: no authenticated portraits of Christopher Columbus are known to exist, so somebody had to come up with  a bust of the explorer.  Sculptor U.S.J. Dunbar was first tapped to design the obverse, and he delivered a design based on the Lotto painting of Columbus (top at left).   Chief Engraver Charles Barber rejected the design, according to  The New York Times that the face wasn’t in line with the generally accepted image of Columbus.   The Times reported that a version of Suardo’s Columbus (center, left) would be used, but in the end Barber based his Columbus profile on a bust of the explorer carved by sculptor Olin Levi Warner.    Barber turned over the design of the reverse to his assistant, George Morgan, who adorned the coin with the Santa Maria and a small map of the world below. 100 of the 1892 version of the coin were struck as proofs, along with the 400th, 1,492nd, and 1,892nd coins minted – those last three coins were held by the Chicago Historical Society and remained sealed until the 1970s.   The rest of the proofs, along with an unknown number of 1893 proofs, were given away or sold and many bear the wear of circulation.

The coins were sold to Expo-goers for $1 each, a 100% markup, which was also a large part of the average person’s paycheck.  Still, hundreds of thousands were sold as keepsakes, and due to their legal-currency status many were also deposited by the Exposition with banks as collateral or payment on loans.   By the end of the Expo, only two million of the coins were distributed, and the rest were returned to the Mint to be melted down.  Coins that had been held in Chicago banks were sold, sometimes en masse, although in rare cases a Columbian silver half-dollar has turned up amongst the regular-issue half-dollars in bank rolls and drawers.  GovMint.com’s stash of a thousand coins, however, is a large pool of the coins to be offered at once (interestingly, Overstock.com also claims to have a stash for sale), and provides an opportunity for most anyone interested in obtaining one of these coins to purchase one.   My first concern, however, is that they do not give information on any single coin, leaving you at the random whim of the shipper when sending out your purchase.   Still, properly graded and mounted coins are all over the place in price, anywhere from $50 to hundreds, which doesn’t provide a very good idea of the correct current market price, which makes the under-$30 proces of GovMint and Overstock an appealing deal.