World of Coins

A normal coin series consists of subunits and sometimes also units. To explain: the currency of my country, the UK, is the pound. The pound is the prime unit of currency, and it is divided into subunits of 100 pence. The unit is the pound, and the subunit is the penny. When the UK adopted a decimal currency in 1971, the highest denomination of coin was the 50 pence. Nowadays, we have a circulating 2 pound coin - or 200 pence, if you prefer to see it that way. Over time, of course, inflation makes it more efficient to use high value coins than banknotes.

If inflation is relatively high, then over a period of years your subunits will become worthless. Your remaining coins will then be denominated in units, and the denominations become higher and higher as inflation progresses. For instance, in 1977 Angola adopted the kwanza, which was subdivided into 100 lwei. The lowest denomination of coin at the time however was the 50 lwei coin. In 1990 the New Kwanza was adopted, and the lowest denomination was now 50 kwanzas. Inflation had killed the lwei. However, in 1999 Angola redenominated the currency and introduced the second kwanza, which was now subdivided into 100 centimos instead of lwei. The lowest denomination of coin in 1999 was 10 centimos.

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Usually in a coin series you see relatively low denominations in terms of numbers. You would expect a face value 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 or 25, and 50 in terms of denominations. Sometimes an expected  denomination will be missing, or an unusual denomination is used - 3, 12½ or 15. At some point, in countries with high inflation, the denominations become higher. Paraguay currently has a one thousand guaranies coin, for instance.

To answer the question "at what point do countries redenominate?" - a significant part of this is "when the economy has settled down enough for it to be worthwhile", or perhaps more pragmatically, "when enough politicians have kidded themselves into believing that it's settled down enough to be worthwhile".

I think this is why we don't routinely see circulation coins with denominations in the millions. A currency where a million units equates to the buying power of a typical coin denomination is either in the middle of an episode of hyperinflation, or has just gone through one. If it's still going on, the government will have other things on its plate than redenominating the currency or issuing coins at all - that's why in all the extreme cases of hyperinflation I can think of, it's banknotes that bear witness to the number of zeroes, not coins. This is true of Germany in 1923, Hungary in 1946, Yugoslavia in the 1990s and Zimbabwe in the 2000s. If the hyperinflation is over, then the government redenominates quickly - as again in the abovementioned countries - and if it issues coins at all, does so in the new, confidence-inducing low denominations.

Turkey is a bit of an exception. I don't think it ever suffered what we would term hyperinflation, just a prolonged period of fairly serious normal inflation. Perhaps there were political reasons for not redenominating earlier.

Thank you for a very logical answer. It makes perfect sense.

My other question is which countries have high denominations of coins these days, in the sense of 200 or 500 units or higher? I am not knowledgeable enough on such matters, but I think our forum member Pabitra might be able to answer that.

Iran and Vietnam come to mind with coin denominations of 5000 rial/dong. Pakistan issued a 550 rupee coin which can be had at face value over there. Japan and Korea have 500 Yen/Won coins

Thank you for those. 550 rupees - an unusual denomination.

Quote from: <k> on July 12, 2020, 11:27:31 PM
Thank you for those. 550 rupees - an unusual denomination.

It is a commemorative coin. However I only see it for $16 on eBay. But it was certainly issued for face value

Quote from: <k> on July 12, 2020, 09:12:31 PM
I am not knowledgeable enough on such matters, but I think our forum member Pabitra might be able to answer that.

Yes, this is my area of work.
500 unit coins are rather common but they certainly do not always indicate need for remonetisation. As a master of fact, as pointed out by Quaziright, Japan and South Korea, despite being low inflation economies, have 500 unit coins due to historic reasons.
Apart from Paraguay already referred above, Colombia and Indonesia have 1000 unit coins.

Then we have 5000 unit coins in Iran and Vietnam.
Incidentally, during my 1 week stay in Vietnam in Dec 2018, I never found even a single coin in circulation.
My planned visit to Iran in May 2020 was cancelled due to lockdown but Iran has already announced remonetisation.

Quote from: <k> on July 12, 2020, 05:31:57 PM
For many years Turkey had such high inflation that it issued coins in denominations of thousands of lira. A thousand lira was denominated as 'BIN LIRA' on the Turkish coins. By 2002 the highest denomination of coin was 250 'bin lira': 250 000 lira.

In countries, which have their own mint, high inflation results in either shifting of coin note boundary repeatedly upwards or rapid remonetisation.
In case of Turkey, it was shift of boundary.
250 bin Lira was succeeded by date wise minting of million lira bae metal coins, before remonetisation

Unlike Zimbabwe, as indicated by Fosseway, the hyperinflation resulted in closure of Harare mint and nation depended solely on issue of ever higher denomination of paper money, Turkey kept the inflation under control and the coin note boundary jumped rather slowly. The issue of base metal lira coins, in step or multiple of 10 times the previous high was
10 Lira -1981
100 Lira -1984
1000 Lira -1986
10 Bin Lira ( 10 Thousand Lira ) - 1994
100 Bin Lira - 1999
1000 Bin or Million Lira -2002
Remonetisation -2005

On the other hand, Brazil adopted regular remonetisation policy

1967 - Novo Cruzeiro = 1000 Cruzeiro
1986 - Cruzado = 1000 Novo Cruzeiro
1989 - Novo Cruzado = 1000 Cruzado
1990 - Cruzeiro = Novo Cruzado
1993 - Cruzeiro Real = 1000 Cruzeiro
1994 - Real = 2750 Cruzeiro Real

If one computes the actual inflation rate, Brazil had a higher rate of inflation than Turkey.

Countries avoid remonetisation because of associated printing and computational problems and present trend is for the population to adopt to US Dollar. My one week stay in Cambodia in December 2017, I did not come across any coin and all shopkeepers and auto rickshaw drivers quoted all prices and fares in US Dollars.

Quote from: quaziright on July 12, 2020, 10:52:20 PM
Pakistan issued a 550 rupee coin which can be had at face value over there.

This is a base metal coin which was to be 50 Rupees denomination but changed to 550 Rupees, to take commercial advantage of expected high demand due to Kartarpur Corridor.
See

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartarpur_Corridor

And religious motive associated with the event

https://www.sikh24.com/2019/04/20/550th-birthday-celebrations-pakistan-all-set-to-launch-special-commemorative-coin-and-postal-ticket

Such denominations are normal in collector coins in India where the denomination matches the anniversary being commemorated. A 550 Rupees coin was also issued by India.

Other odd denominations have been 60, 75, 125, 350 etc

Mints do produce odd denomination collector coins in Europe too,  like 2,5 Euro in Portugal, 3 Euro etc

Thank you for an excellent survey, Pabitra.

1990 - Cruzeiro = Novo Cruzado. So that was a redenomination only as regards the name and not the value. Unusual.

I wonder also how many countries have changed the name of their subunit after a redenomination. As I mentioned, in Angola the kwanza was originally equal to 100 lwei, then after redenomination the kwanza was equal to 100 centimos.

Argentina changed from centavo to peso (1970) to new peso (1983) to peso Argentino (1985) back to centavos (1992) for the sub-unit. BTW, some countries have more than one sub-unit.

Peter

Yes, Malta had its mils, cents and liras. The UK had its pounds, shillings and pence.

The next item is to provide a list of those places that currently have more than one subunit, and/or those that did in the twentieth century.

Sometimes it's easier to use several subunits. Byte, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes.

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In 1990 Argentina issued a 1000 australes coin before redenominating the currency.

From Wikipedia:

The austral was the currency of Argentina between June 15, 1985 and December 31, 1991. It was subdivided into 100 centavos.

The austral replaced the peso argentino at a rate of 1 austral = 1000 pesos argentinos. In 1992, the austral was itself replaced by the peso convertible at a rate of 1 peso convertible = 10,000 australes.

When it comes to re-denominations, I find Mauritania interesting. Their currency is the ouguiya, and in January 2018 a new "version" replaced the old one: Oddly enough, 10 old ouguiyas - not 100 or 1,000 or so - became 1 new ouguiya ...

Ah well, Mauritania and Madagascar are the only countries in the world where "1 (main unit) is 5 (sub-units)" instead of 100. Not sure whether the sub-unit is still used in Madagascar. From what I know, in Mauritania it is not.

Christian

Quote from: chrisild on July 14, 2020, 05:27:01 PM
When it comes to re-denominations, I find Mauritania interesting. Their currency is the ouguiya, and in January 2018 a new "version" replaced the old one: Oddly enough, 10 old ouguiyas - not 100 or 1,000 or so - became 1 new ouguiya

And I see that now the lowest denomination of coin is ⅕ ouguiya - followed by 1 ouguiya. So perhaps they need to reintroduce the 'khoum' (⅕ ouguiya).

Quote from: chrisild on July 14, 2020, 05:27:01 PM
Not sure whether the sub-unit is still used in Madagascar. From what I know, in Mauritania it is not.

Apparently the lowest denomination of coin in Madagascar is 1 franc. A 50 ariary coin also circulates. 1 ariary = 5 francs. So there is only one subunit these days.

Currently the unit of Madagascar is the ariary (1 ariary = 5 iraimbilanja). Before 2003 the unit was the franc, without subunits (ariary was used as a name for 5 francs, iraimbilanja for 1 franc). AFAIK the coins in francs are still legal tender.

Quote from: <k> on July 14, 2020, 12:31:18 PM

1990 - Cruzeiro = Novo Cruzado. So that was a redenomination only as regards the name and not the value. Unusual.

Yes, even I found it rather odd.
They planned to remove " new" within less than two years but ended up renaming it from BRN to BRE on 16th March 1990, after having changed to Novo Cruzado only on 16th January 1989.
There must be some reason other than economic or numismatic but I have not been able to fathom that.

Quote from: Pabitra on July 14, 2020, 07:44:59 AM
In countries, which have their own mint, high inflation results in either shifting of coin note boundary repeatedly upwards or rapid remonetisation.
In case of Turkey, it was shift of boundary.
250 bin Lira was succeeded by date wise minting of million lira bae metal coins, before remonetisation

As far as I know the million lire coins were tourist pieces available from the mint only - that is why the coin pictured has the date 22nd March, this is the day that person visited the mint.  250 Bin Lire was biggest coin in circulation.

I am not sure about that but SCWC does list base metal coins of 500,000.    750,000 and 1,000,000 Lira coins.

KM#1161, 1162 and 1163 ( images too large to be compressed and uploaded)

Whether they got issued in to circulation, were sold at mint only or were souvenir coins - your guess may be better than mine.

I'd argue that it is important information for collectors to know which coins actually circulated.

Peter

But that will fairly often be difficult to determine. As for those Turkish high denomination coins, this Numista page (https://en.numista.com/catalogue/turquie-12.html) for example lists pieces labeled as "Non-circulating coin" while others seem to be in the "Circulating commemorative coin" category. The Istanbul mint visit piece is also in the latter group; now did it circulate? In the sense that it was available at face, yes. Other than that, hmm. :)

Christian

Quote from: chrisild on July 16, 2020, 12:20:56 PM
But that will fairly often be difficult to determine. As for those Turkish high denomination coins, this Numista page (https://en.numista.com/catalogue/turquie-12.html) for example lists pieces labeled as "Non-circulating coin" while others seem to be in the "Circulating commemorative coin" category. The Istanbul mint visit piece is also in the latter group; now did it circulate? In the sense that it was available at face, yes. Other than that, hmm. :)

Christian

It's left up the country moderators discretion in Numista. For instance, French silver euro commems that can be had at face value will be included in the circulating commemorative section. I know this because the moderator himself told me so. Similarly Portugal follows the same logic, however Germany does not

Quote from: Figleaf on July 16, 2020, 10:30:27 AM
I'd argue that it is important information for collectors to know which coins actually circulated.

Yes, in normal times, it should hold good.
In present case, we are discussing extremely high inflation periods, on the cusp on remonetisation.

The coins might have been minted for circulation but did not circulate.

We are excluding silver and gold coins else, France issues a gold coin with denomination of 1000€ and issues at face value. Does it make it a circulation coin? Its mintage is against specific order and rarely does it go above two digits.

That brings us to mintage data to be used as definition of circulation vs non circulating.

Another aspect is design. Does it show an event or a person being celebrated? Also does it get minted in more than one year?

All these aspects need to be kept in mind before deciding whether it is a circulation coin.

Another aspect I really check is that is the denomination a normal jump over the previous high denomination? Pakistan 550 Rupees base metal coin jumps over the previous high of 10 Rupees circulation coin. What is your opinion on that?

In case of circulation coin being difficult to obtain, I will quote two examples.

Nigeria issued three coins in 2006. Before they got issued, they had become worthless and persons withdrawing cash from banks were forced to accept a part payment in coins.

Venezuela demonetised its currency in 2018 and issued two coins of Bolivar Soberano ( VES) but before issuing, the metal cost had gone much above the face value so after issuing for few days, balance were never issued and melted. Did they circulate even if they were circulation coins?

More example could be quoted but these should suffice.

Whichever way is decided upon there are always exceptions  ;)

The Venezuela and Nigeria sets were intended to be used though, even if in practice they were not.
Whilst you had to make a special effort to get the Turkish coins.

Recently some UK commemorative 50p's, which were only available at a premium were circulated by a coin dealer here.....

Quote from: andyg on July 16, 2020, 08:36:34 PM

Recently some UK commemorative 50p's, which were only available at a premium were circulated by a coin dealer here.....

That makes them circulating commemoratives, at best.

The dealers do tend to reduce their inventory at a loss when the get chance where opportunity cost is more profitable.

The coins under discussion here are general circulation ( or definitive, as some call them, to borrow the term from philately). These are those which are minted in larger numbers ( usually) and for many years and issued by banks or post office at face value.

For countries, which are regular in minting, I track them year by year.

Why has UK 2 Pounds not been issued since 2016?
Is a redesign in offing?

Quote from: Pabitra on July 17, 2020, 06:18:31 AM
Why has UK 2 Pounds not been issued since 2016?
Is a redesign in offing?

The new 12-sided bimetallic pound coin was released in September 2017. Since that was known already in 2016, presumably masses of new pound coins were issued for a while, and that pushed out the 2 pound coins. Our member Alan71 had complained about the lack of 2 pound coins since then for some time. In fact, I have noticed their return in force in recent months, and I have had two Shakespeare 2 pound coins (each time the 'dagger and crown' design) in the past weeks.

I am still astonished that I have never received a Britannia 2 pound coin since its release in 2015. Apparently many people missed Britannia on the old 50 pence. It seems however that they were nostalgic for that particular 50 pence Britannia design, and I have never heard anybody enthuse about the new design on the 2 pound coin. In fact, it was the Daily Mail that kicked up a fuss back in 2008, so I suspect its readers have quickly moved on to other obsessions and forgotten about the Britannia issue.  :D

You will have read our member eurocoin's recent topic about counterfeit 2 pound coins appearing more frequently. Perhaps it is time to make the 2 pound coin more resistant to forgery, by including some micro-letters, for instance.

Quote from: <k> on July 17, 2020, 01:17:47 PM
Perhaps it is time to make the 2 pound coin more resistant to forgery, by including some micro-letters, for instance.

I was seeking Andy's insight on the subject.

Quote from: Pabitra on July 19, 2020, 06:36:10 AM
I was seeking Andy's insight on the subject.

I don't have anything to add.
<k> has the most likely reason, that issuance of the new £1 coin in vast numbers caused the £2 not to be required.  Forgeries of £2 coins have been around a few years - but they are getting more common.