Ottoman 1918 100 Kurush

[Austrokiwi]

I was in Amman over the weekend and dropped into both the Gold market and some jewellery shops. As has been my past experience the gold market offered marginal coins at highly inflated prices, although they expect you to bargain the starting prices are so ridiculous that the actual value of the coin is around 20% of what they first ask for.............. When that happens I just don't bother to haggle as to bring the bargaining to reasonable levels I feel my counter offer would be insulting (from experience). The jewellery shops sell gold and silver coins by weight using the daily spot prices so finding a collectable coin can mean a cheap purchase.   
  One of "my" trusted Jewellers' had had  someone come into the shop a few days earlier and sell a paper bag of Gold bars and coins. So he let me have a look  around 70% of the coins were Jordanian produced replicas. {They can not be described as fakes as they are always counter stamped with the alloy quality (in Kts)}. As a double check I have learnt to ask  as to whether the coin is Jordanian made!

Any way  of the real coins this one really caught my eye. Its a 1918 100 Kurush (Piastres). From Krause it appears there is not much interest in individual dates but this one pleased me as it is a 1918 coin minted I assume before November of that year.  I also purchased another gold coin but I will post this in another thread.

[Austrokiwi]

Reverse scan:

[Figleaf]

Incredible, that this is considered a bullion coin. Seems to be in a very attractive condition also. Do I see some original lustre? Even more incredible that they were struck while Turkey was at war and losing. According to KM, silver 10 and 20 kurush and gold 25, 50, 100 and 500 kurush were struck, all other gold denominations of 1327/10 commanding fat premiums over gold.

You have to wonder where the demand for gold coins was coming from. Maybe some influential, well-informed people trying to protect there protruding behinds from big bad inflation?

Peter

[Austrokiwi]

I think your probably right, about the Back side covering. What amuses me futher is the honorific title on the obverse: "El Gharzi"  Krause says it means "The Victorious" however some native Arabic speakers ( I know the coin is Turkish) have told me a more accurate translation would be "Conquerer". What ever the accurate translation it was a bit ironic being on a 1918 coin!!!

[translateltd]

The legends are in Arabic, even though the coin is Turkish - "zuriba fi Qustantiniyah" (struck in Constantinople) is straight Arabic, as is "El Ghazi" (I know there are different transliterations for both of these, but you get the point ...)

One amusing error that I have been trying to have corrected in both Pick (or SCWPM these days) and the Banknote Yearbook published by Token Publishing is the description of the overprinted British banknotes for use by the British Expeditionary Forces in 1915 (P#348b and 349b) - both catalogues say the overprints are in Arabic and read "Piastres silver 60" and "Piastres silver 120" - WRONG on all counts!  First, the legends are in Turkish (but using the Arabic alphabet as they did then) and, given that the Arabic alphabet reads right to left, the overprints read quite correctly "60 silver piastres" etc.