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Urk - Dutch Rijksdaalders used for buttons

Started by Pellinore, September 26, 2021, 10:17:50 AM

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Pellinore

We visited the picturesque village of Urk, which until 1939 was an island in an inland sea. It now lies secluded in a polder in the Netherlands and its proud, quirky residents are considered - special. I don't want to dwell on this here. Clichés are greatly magnified when it comes to the Reformed Christian fishing village of Urk.

The custom has now almost died out, but until recently people still wore folk costumes there, and the fishermen's tarry trousers traditionally are fastened with large silver buttons, model Dutch Rijksdaalders and similar pieces of silver.

I always like taking pictures of coins in museums, and in the Urk Museum we struck gold again (or shiny tinsel). Everywhere in the sizable, picturesque museum, man-sized fashion dolls in Urk costumes are bewilderingly staring at you, and there I saw that those large silver buttons are in fact counterfeit 19th-century rijksdaalders and three guilder pieces of King Willem I (1815-1840) and the first King of the Netherlands, Louis Napoleon (1806-1810). The copper shimmered nicely through.

Fair enough, if a button gets ripped off your breeches when pulling in a fishing net, you don't want to lose a coin worth 500 dollars, but rather a piece that pretends to be.

-- Paul

Pellinore

This was on Wikimedia Commons: a baby born about 2013, sporting two Rijksdaalders of Queen Juliana, of the early 1960s. Probably real.
-- Paul

Figleaf

#2
The museum is showing Sunday (church) dress, so I am a bit surprised by the fakes. Maybe the museum  replaced the real stuff with fakes so the public could have better access to the mannequins? On board, the dress would not be ornamented and ... uhhh ... by "signed" by the fish the crew had handled.

They are probably hard to fix on plaster ears, but there are plenty of examples of earrings made from small coins. My grandmother had a pair. I have also seen bracelets and necklaces made of coins in the collecting of what used to be the royal coin cabinet, as well as silverware and glassware inlaid with coins. Many, if not practically all of those were genuine.

Making stuff from coins is an old tradition in the Netherlands, but it probably had its zenith in the years right after the second world war. People had hoarded silver coins in large quantity, even 10 and 25 cent coins with low silver content. When the coins were demonetised and replaced with Cu-Ni coins, the silver was not exchanged much. When it proved that the coins couldn't be sold except at a disagio (due to melting cost) for their silver content, the craze of turning them into jewellery and tableware started.

Peter
An unidentified coin is a piece of metal. An identified coin is a piece of history.

Alex Island

Urk is an island, so I collected tokens for it. Here's what I found:
All islands around the world & islands coin

Figleaf

The first two medals (they are known as penningen in Dutch) are from a long series of local tourist medals. Some could be used for purchases in local shops, most couldn't. The first were often struck at the national mint in Utrecht. Later issues don't have a mint mark. They were popular for a while during the sixties, seventies and early eighties, but, largely due to over-issuing, demand has since died down. A local dealer, Johan Mevius Jr., did a catalogue on them, but gave up when too many of them were issued - up to six a month, many with varieties in silver and gold.

The third one is a medal that was issued in the years leading up to the introduction of the euro. Otherwise, it is much the same story: early enthusiasm for fantasy issues, over-issue and oblivion, except that it was worse because even more ECU issues were made in other member states.

Peter
An unidentified coin is a piece of metal. An identified coin is a piece of history.