What does “Island Aurar” mean on a coin?

Short answer: It means it’s from Iceland.

“Island” looks like a cognate to the English word of the same spelling, but “ís” actually means “ice” in the Icelandic language. So ís + land = “Iceland,” the name of the nation.

“Aurar” is the name of a subsidiary currency unit. I believe the singular is “eyrir” and the plural is “aurar.” 100 aurar = 1 króna (plural krónur).

For example, here’s a 25 aurar Icelandic coin from 1940 under King Christian X:

Iceland shared a ruler with Denmark, at least until 1944 when it became an independent republic. Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany at the time, and was in no position to administer its overseas holdings.

Here are some additional Icelandic coins for reference:

Iceland, 5 Aurar, 1942 and 1946 (post-independence from Denmark, so no royal monogram)

Some modern Icelandic coins: 10 Krónur 1996, 50 Krónur 1987, 1 Króna 1992

What’s the difference between the Danish krone and kroner?

Short answer: Kroner is the plural form, and krone is the singular.

Both coins come from the Latin word corona, for “crown.” Denmark is not on the Euro, so it still uses its own currency. The modern krone dates back to 1875, when it replaced the rigsdaler and skilling monetary system. Several countries have similar-sounding currency units, with the same etymology. Examples are the Swedish krona (plural kronor), the Norwegian krone/kroner and the former Austrian krone/kronen.

Above: Two Danish 1 Krone coins from 1942 (left) and 1930 (right)

An 80% silver Danish 2 kroner commemorating King Christian X turning 60 in 1930.

Greenland also occasionally issued its own krone coinage, as a Danish colony (now an autonomous territory). A Greenland 1 krone is shown below.

Greenland 1 Krone, 1926

What is this: “Cambodia 1860, 10 Centimes”? Why isn’t it in the coin catalog?

I saw one of these at a coin shop earlier this year, not yet attributed. The owners didn’t know quite what to do with it, as they couldn’t find it anywhere in the Standard Catalog of World Coins for 1801-1900 under Cambodia. Obverse says: “Norodom I Roi du Cambodge 1860” (Norodom I, King of Cambodia, 1860). There’s also the engraver’s name under the head, “C WURDEN”, but you can’t really make that out on mine. The reverse says: “Dix Centimes” (10 Centimes).

The coin is findable on Numista, along with the rest of the 1860 series. I could also find it in my obsolete Krause catalog from 1995. According to Krause, in spite of the 1860 date, the coins of this series were actually minted in 1875. 1860 was the date of Norodom I‘s ascension to the throne, so that may be why this coin series uses that date. A later set of the same coins was struck in 1899 with the same dies, since corroded, which give the surface a less smooth appearance. The dies were used until they wore out, so some of the coins in this later series have spectacular die cracks.

As for where to find them in the current coin book, the entire series has been moved to the exonumia companion book, “Unusual World Coins“. This is a bit confusing, as the coins look like normal circulation issues, and there is no mention of the series in the regular book to even let one know where to find them. Based on the condition of many of the coins, including mine, it appears that they did circulate and were used as money. But for whatever editorial reasons, they are treated as medals rather than coins. The difference between a coin, a circulating commemorative coin, and a medal is on a continuum, and is not absolute. My personal guess is that the publisher would like to drive up sales of its unusual world coins book, so perhaps they tend to favor moving the borderline cases to that volume.

Anyway, it’s a fun series to keep an eye out for. Mine is probably from the restrike series based on the weird porous texture on the obverse. Normal wear removes details, but doesn’t usually produce that kind of texturing, so I assume it is from the degraded die condition. Prices seem to have come up on these a bit. The old Krause has the 10 Centimes at $15 for the originals in VF and $12 for the restrikes. Mine cost me $10, but it’s not in VF condition. Many of the ones online these days seem to be asking quite a bit more, even in worn condition. One can do an Ebay search for completed sales to see what they have sold for recently to get a rough idea of current values. Small differences in condition can lead to big differences in price, of course.

What is this? (Tibetan copper coin, 29 mm)

Since my earlier post on how to identify Tibetan silver tangkas occasionally attracts random search engine traffic, I thought it might be useful to work through another example. This time it’s the Tibetan copper coin pictured below:

The coins stats are: 8.7 g, 29 mm, reeded edges, copper or bronze composition.

Numista is a good site to start with for searching out unknown coins. Usually I would start with the date or some of the lettering on the coin to narrow it down, but as none of these are in an alphabet I can read, one can also do a search based on other parameters. Let’s do a custom search for a coin from issuer–Tibet, composition–non precious (this includes all the various copper alloys), diameter, 28-30 mm. Here are the results. There are only 4 coin types to look through so it should be easy to pick one. If we were getting many pages of results, it’s best to add more parameters to further specify, such as weight, edge type, etc. For diameter and weight, I recommend a range rather than a single value in case one’s own coin has slightly different measurements than the values in the database, to avoid false negatives.

Anyway, of the four types listed, three are quite similar, with small differences in the obverse design. Some have two suns next to the mountain, others a sun and a moon like the example above. Here is the closest type, a copper 5 Sho coin minted from 1949-53 . Now for the date and any variety information we can gather.

Tibetan dates can be spelled out or written in Tibetan numerals. Fortunately, Tibetan numerals are related to the Arabic numerals used in the West, so they are not too hard to pick out if you know what to look for. I’ll swipe the table from my previous post. Left is Western numerals, center is Tibetan, right is Arabic.

0     ༠     ٠

1     ༡     ١

2     ༢     ٢

3     ༣     ٣

4     ༤     ٤

5     ༥     ٥

6     ༦    ٦

7     ༧     ٧

8     ༨     ٨

9     ༩     ٩

Two other useful works to look for are “cycle” indicating which 60-year calendar cycle and “year”.

• 

  Cycle

Year

In this case, “cycle” is written on the reverse, at the top of the center circle. At the left of the center row is the cycle number, 16. Creounity time machine has a converter for Tibetan to AD dates (among many others). If we type the first two symbols, ༡༦, it shows cycle 16 started in 1926.

16

After the “year” letters, there is a number 24. We can add those two characters into Creounity to get the date of 1950. The Tibetan calendar doesn’t begin on January first, so we might be off by a month or so, but that’s as closely as we can specify the date from what’s marked on the coin. This was one of the last series of coins issued by an independent Tibet before it was reconquered by China in 1950-51. Oddly, the series continued for a few years after that, until 1953.

24

For 1950, there are several varieties with different placements of hidden dots on the obverse. Unfortunately, I am not familiar with these varieties well enough to know where to look for the dots. In general, these varieties are of similar value in the Western marketplace. Zeno.ru has multiple pages of photos and descriptions of the different subtle varieties if one wishes to attempt that level of identification.

What is this? (Amsterdam token, “1275 1975 Mokum 700 Florijn”)

Short answer: It’s a token to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the City of Amsterdam.

Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, is thought to have been founded around 1275 AD, or at least the oldest reference known referring to the city by name. The obverse has a Latin phrase, “Insignia Amstelredami” meaning “The sign of Amsterdam” next to the city’s coat of arms. On the reverse, the token has the year of issue (1975) and the year being commemorated (1275) around three diagonal crosses, which are a common symbol of the city of Amsterdam. “Mokum” is a Yiddish nickname for the city, short for “Mokum Aleph“, which approximately means “City A”. City B would Berlin, City R would be Rotterdam, and so on. In the case of Amsterdam, a shorthand of the nickname has stuck around as an affectionate nickname for the city. The 700 indicates the year of the anniversary. To the right is the mint mark of the Royal Dutch Mint in Utrecht, a caduceus (twin serpent staff). This has been the symbol of the mint since 1816. The rooster on the left is the symbol of the mintmaster at the time (1969-1980), Marius van den Brandhof. In older coins it is common to have a set of initials or a special mark to indicate the mintmaster who takes responsibility for the purity and weight of the coin.

At the bottom is the Dutch word “florijn,” the equivalent of the English word florin, an old coin denomination. Guilder = “gold penny” and florin = “Fiorino d’oro”, both referring to a Medieval Florentine gold coin standard which formed the basis for the currency unit of several countries, including the Netherlands. This token coin was worth the equivalent one Dutch guilder, the pre-Euro currency unit in use at the time. It could be spent in shops with one guilder in value during the anniversary year. I don’t know how much the coins sold for at the time, but I’m guessing a little more than that, so it probably wouldn’t have made much sense to spend it except as a novelty. They made over a million of these, and most of them don’t seem to have seen much circulation, so it is often possible to find these in nice condition for about two to three Euros.

What is notgeld? What is kriegsgeld? What’s the difference?

Short answer: Both are types of emergency money issued by Germany from World War I through the early 1920s. Kriegsgeld (war money) is a subset of notgeld (emergency money) which was issued during wartime.

World War I had profound effects on the money supply in Europe, and these didn’t all go away when the armistice was signed in late 1918. The German Empire mostly paid for the war through borrowing, in hope that if victorious, it might be able to extract large reparations from the defeated powers to help pay off its wartime debts. A similar plan had worked at the end of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), in which Germany successfully demanded a 5 billion franc indemnity, so this was not an unreasonable hope for Germany in WWI. As the war dragged on, especially with the late entry of the United States on the side of the Allied Powers against Germany, the outlook for a decisive victory for Germany became bleak. Even the treaty of Brest-Litovsk after the Russian Revolution, which gave up huge amounts of territory to Germany and freed up manpower to move to the Western Front, came too late to turn things around.

Wartime inflation made silver money scarce in Germany. War leads to huge increases in the demand for goods and labor, which is inherently inflationary. Germany had been on a gold standard since 1873, but most subsidiary coinage was made of silver. Germany suspended the convertibility of marks into gold in July, 1914. This suspension was imagined to be a temporary measure, which would not require leaving the gold standard, while freeing up money for wartime expenses. With gold unavailable, the price of silver shot up, driving most of the silver coinage out of circulation due to Gresham’s Law.

With little to no small change available, many cities and regions were compelled to issue their own local emergency money, called notgeld (emergency money) or kriegsnotgeld (wartime emergency money). By the way, notgeld is a false cognate in English. The not- prefix means “emergency” in German, not the English “not.” Copper is an important metal for wartime production, so much of the German notgeld was made of iron or zinc. Zinc especially tends to corrode badly over time, so even zinc coins which did not circulate for long are very difficult to find in mint condition. Notgeld was also made from more exotic materials, such as porcelain, compressed coal dust, and even cardboard.

There was a bewildering variety of wartime notgeld issues, many of which are now quite inexpensive. Here are a few examples of mine:

Coblenz, 1918, 25 Pfennig, Iron

Düren, 1918, 10 Pfennig, Iron

Neuweid am Rhein, 1917, 10 Pfennig, Iron

Mainz, 1918, 5 Pfennig, Iron

Württemberg, Oberamt Göppingen, 1918, 10 Pfennig, Iron

Rodach, 1918, 50 Pfennig, Zinc

Another category of wartime coinage which is slightly different from notgeld is occupation money. Instead of being issued by cities or regions within the home country due to wartime shortages, occupation money was issued for use in captured territory. For example, here is a German-issued 1 kopek for use in the captured territories on the Eastern Front, including Poland, Lithuania and parts of Northwest Russia.

Germany Military Coinage, Ost, Kopeck, 1916, Iron

After the war, the monetary situation in Germany did not normalize right away. The world price of silver had risen from about $0.55 per ounce in 1914 to a high of about $1.32 in 1920. At such high silver prices, subsidiary silver coinage from before the war was still worth much more at melt than at face value, so it would not have returned to circulation. In addition, the Treaty of Versailles imposed punitive reparations against Germany, holding it responsible for the war. These placed immense financial strain on a Germany devastated by the war, and would contribute to its hyperinflation a few years later. In these conditions, the need for notgeld to provide local small change continued well into the 1920s. Here are a few examples of postwar notgeld.

Aachen, 1920, 25 Pfennig, Iron

Bonn, 1920, 25 Pfennig, Iron

Bremen, No Date (1918-22), 2 Pfennig, brass

Dieburg, 5 pfennig, 1920, iron

Frankenthal, 1919, 10 Pfennig, iron

Trier, 1919, 10 Pfennig, iron

These are only a small fraction of the huge variety of notgeld out there, based on what’s in my personal collection. One could spend a whole lifetime hunting down varieties of notgeld without finding all the rarities. A few of mine I’ve found if coin store junk bins, and the rest were generally $5 or less. Condition matters a lot, especially for the zinc coins, which tend to corrode badly.

After the war, Germany entered into a period of hyperinflation from 1921-23. Most of the inflationary money was printed as paper money, though a few coins exist as well. The only coins I have from that era are a 1922 aluminum 3 marks (right) and a 1921 iron 5 pfennig (left). The middle coin doesn’t really belong with them. I had thought it was an issue of the Weimar Republic, but it’s actually a 50 pfennig notgeld issue from the city of Weimar in 1918, when the war was still ongoing.

What is written on the scrolls on the reverse of the Venezuelan silver 2 and 5 Bolívares coins?

Venezuela 2 Bolívares, 1926

Venezuela 5 Bolívares, 1912

This entry is more for search engines, since I wasn’t able to find the answer in Krause, or transcribed on Numista (2 or 5). Although the current coin images on Numista are clearer than when I looked into this a few months ago, and one can just read it off the coin images pretty easily.

Silver 2 Bolívares, 1879-1936:

Obverse–BOILVAR LIBERTADOR BARRE

Reverse–ESTADOS UNIDOS DE VENEZUELA GRAM. 10 1926 LEI 835 [Scroll] INDEPENDENCIA LIBERTAD   5 DE JULIO 1811 28 DE MARZO 1864 DIOS Y FED.

Silver 5 Bolívares, 1879-1936:

Obverse–BOILVAR LIBERTADOR BARRE

Reverse–ESTADOS UNIDOS DE VENEZUELA GRAM. 25 1912 LEI 900 [Scroll] INDEPENDENCIA LIBERTAD   5 DE JULIO 1811 13 DE ABRIL 1864 DIOS Y FED.

Explanations: The front has the name of Simón Bolívar, the hero of South American independence from Spain and namesake of the Venezuelan currency. Barre was the name of the engraver. The reverse has “United States of Venezuela” and the date, along with the weight (10 and 25 grams, respectively) and fineness of the coins (0.835).

The scroll has “Independence Liberty” on the top section. The middle section has two dates. The leftmost date is the same on both: July 5th, 1811. This is Venezuela’s National Day, celebrating independence from Spain in 1811. The right-hand date is different for the two denominations. On the 2 Bolívares coin it is March 28th, 1864, and on the 5 it is April 13, 1864. These are the dates of the drafting and ratification of the 1864 Venezuelan Constitution. Apparently, Venezuela has had 27 different constitutions between 1811 and the most recent one, in 1999. Why this one is of particular note compared to the others, I can’t exactly say. Venezuela had just concluded a civil war, and the new constitution drafted afterwards guaranteed a federal republic with greater autonomy for the provinces. Perhaps the government of Venezuela in the late 1800s and early 1900s felt this was a development worth commemorating. The third section of the scroll has “God and Fed. [eration]”.

The image on the coins’ reverse was based on the then-current Venezuelan Coat of Arms. The design is slightly different, though, if one looks at the orientation of the crossed cornucopias or the arrangement of the leaves on the plants on the sides. And the dates are different, depending on which version of the coat of arms you compare to.

A couple of notes–the scrolls are some of the highest points on the coins, and tend to be early to show wear. Unless the coin is in lightly circulated condition or better, the text can be too worn to read. Also, the 2 and 5 Bolívares coins have weights proportional to their values: 10 and 25 grams. However, the 2 was a subsidiary coin with only 0.835 fineness compared to the 0.900 fine 5 Bolívares. Having subsidiary coins of lower metal content than larger denominations was a common tactic in the 1800s to try and combat shortages of small change. The smaller coins were worth less as metal, making them unprofitable to export or melt down. The larger coins were full-bodied, because debasing them as well would simply have devalued the currency. This worked reasonably well, as long as the public was willing to accept the less-than-full-bodied-subsidiary coins. Also, any time a coin is worth more at face value than in metal value, it creates an opportunity for counterfeiters to make their own versions at a profit.

How do I identify Ethiopian coins?

Below:  A selection of modern Ethiopian coins, 1903-2008Ethiopian coins can be hard for a beginner to identify, as they use a non-Western script.  Even the numbers for the dates and denomination may only be given in Ge’ez numerals. One common feature is that Ethiopian coins will almost all have a lion.  For older coins, during which Ethiopia had an emperor, the Lion of Judah (a lion carrying a scepter with a cross diagonally) appears on the reverse, signifying the legendary Solomonic origins of the Imperial Family.  For modern coins of the Communist government or the subsequent Republic of Ethiopia, the lion will appear as a large lion’s head on the obverse.

Once you have narrowed a coin down as likely coming from Ethiopia, there are free online resources one can use to compare to the coin.  For example, a search for coins from Ethiopia on Numista gives only 4 pages of results, so it’s not too time consuming to look for a match by hand.  One caveat is that several coins look very similar.  One may need to check the weight and diameter to see which one you have.  For example, the 1944 series of 1, 5 and 10 santeem are shown below.All of them have a bust of Emperor Hailé Selassié I on the obverse, along with the date ፲፱፻፴፮ (1936 by the Ethiopian calendar, which is 1944 in the Western calendar).  The reverse has a Lion of Judah with the denomination spelled out in Amharic script:  either 1 (አንድ:ሳንቲም), 5 (ለምለት:ሳንቲም) or 10 santeem (አሥር:ሳንቲም).  Modern Amharic is written from left to right, in spite of it being a Semitic Language, of the same family as such right-to-left languages as Arabic and Hebrew.  If you weigh them, they are approximately 3, 4 and 6 grams of copper for the 1, 5 and 10, respectively.

Reading dates is a bit tricky.  Amharic numerals are derived from Ancient Greek numerals, in which the first 9 letters represent the digits 1-9, the next 9 for the numbers 10-90, and the last 9 for numbers from 100-900.  In that way, three letters can be used to write any letter from 1 to 999.  The Greek alphabet only has 24 letters, so 3 obsolete letters: stigma (Ϛ), koppa (Ϙ) and sampi (ͳ), are needed to have enough letters for a full three digits.  Though the concept of zero existed, no separate numeral for zero as a place value holder had been invented yet.

Above is a table borrowed from Wikipedia showing how numerals in the Ethiopian Ge’ez script evolved from Ancient Greek via Coptic.  Unlike in Greek, Ethiopian numerals end with 100.  Larger numbers are written as multiples of 100 followed by the numeral for 100, ፻.  A doubled 100 character (፼) represents  10,000s.  To distinguish numbers from letters, numbers have lines written over and under them.  If numbers are spelled out in Amharic rather than using numerals, though, the lines are not used.

Going back to the 1944 copper coins pictured above, we now have enough information to decode the date, ፲፱፻፴፮.  These are the numerals for 10, 9, 100, 30 and 6 in order, representing (10+9)*100+30+6 = 1936.  Though the Ethiopian calendar is a Christian one, it calculates a different start date for the Annunciation of Christ.  The Ethiopian year starts around September, so one needs to add 7 or 8 years to the Ethiopian year to get the equivalent Western AD date.  These copper coins are thus all dated 1944 AD.

As a side note, the Ethiopian Calendar has leap years every 4 years without exception for 100/400 year corrections.  And the leap year cycle is named rotating through the 4 Evangelists. So this year (2020) would be a Luke year, followed by a John, Matthew and Mark year in a 4 year cycle.

Now that we can read off dates, let’s look at some older coins.The left coin is a bit worn and hard to make out, but the date is ፲፰፻፺፩, 1895 = 1903 AD.  It is a silver 1 gersh, from a pre-decimal monetary system in which 20 ghersh = 1 birr.  The Emperor on the face is Menelik II.  The righthand coin is dated ፲፱፻፳፫, 1923 = 1931 AD.  It is a nickel 25 matonas of Emperor Hailé Selassié I.  Unlike the more recent copper coins shown earlier, the Emperor is shown with his crown instead of bareheaded in a Western-style suit.  Next are 4 coins from the Communist and modern eras.

From L to R and top top bottom:

5 Santeem, Brass, Derg Socialist Junta,  ፲፱፻፷፱ 1969 = 1977 AD

10 Santeem, Brass, Derg Socialist Junta,  ፲፱፻፷፱ 1969 = 1977 AD

25 Santeem, Nickle-plated Steel, Republic of Ethiopia, ፪ሺህ 2000 = 2008.  The date is given as the numeral 2 (፪) followed by the word thousand (ሺ = ši) spelled out.

50 Santeem, Cu-Ni, Derg Socialist Junta,  ፲፱፻፷፱ 1969 = 1977 AD

Coins from before and after the fall of the Communist regime generally use the same designs.  One can use the dates to tell which era they came from.  Some coins changed material from brass to brass-plated steel in the post-Communist era.  They can be differentiated by the dates, or because the plated steel ones are attracted to a magnet.

What is coin clipping?

Short answer:  Coin clipping is a method of debasement of gold or silver coins by shaving off a bit around the perimeter.  The underweight “clipped” coin can then be passed off for face value and the remaining metal melted down for profit.

Below:  A stack of 2 different 2 reales coins, from Chile 1812 (beneath) and Seville 1737 (atop).  Both should be about 27 mm diameter, but the Seville one has been clipped.

Until the 20th century, most coins derived their value from their precious metal content, in either gold or silver.  Gold and silver are relatively soft metals, and coins would wear gradually with circulation, losing some of the material from their edges and faces over time.  There was an active debate in the Middle Ages as to whether money should be counted by weight or by the face values of the coins.  In general, a well-worn coin might be refused, or only be accepted at a discount based on its actual remaining weight.

Coin clippers could artificially simulate this wear by shaving off a thin portion of the perimeter of the coin and passing off the remainder.  If the design of the coin did not extend to the very edge, it could be very difficult to determine if a coin was undersized.  Hammered coins were somewhat irregular in size and shape anyway, so it could be difficult to tell if a coin had been altered without a scale and an accurate set of weights.

Below, a Medieval Edward I English “long cross” silver penny, 1282-1289

For example, English silver pennies were made with a short cross on the reverse until the mid-1200s.  This made it difficult to judge where the edge of the coin should lie, making it too easy for coin clippers to remove some of the silver.  The “long cross” type, such as on the coin shown above, had the cross extending fully to the edge, making it easier to judge if the coin had been altered.  Even so, you can see that the coins were somewhat irregular, and could be struck weakly, or off-center during the hammering process.  Even if one had another penny of the exact same type for comparison, it would have been difficult to tell by eye if one had been altered.

The punishments for being caught coin clipping were severe.  It was often treated as comparable in severity to counterfeiting, and could warrant a death sentence.  Nevertheless, the potential profits were great enough that coin clipping did happen, with examples known dating back to ancient times.

Other similar methods for reducing the metal content of coins included “sweating” coins, by placing them in a bag and rubbing them together to collect the dust, or “plugging” coins by removing a small section and replacing it with base metal.  I’ve heard of chemical leeching to remove some of the metal from coins, but don’t have a reference at the moment as to how it would have been done.

One major method to combat coin clipping was milled edges.  Coins would have a series of fine grooves around the perimeter which could be examined to easily determine whether material had been removed, by honest wear or by debasement.  Modern milled edges were introduced under mint master Isaac Newton (yes, the same guy) in the 1600s.  Some ancient coins also had grooved edges as an anti-counterfeiting measure, though I don’t know what technique was used to add the grooves.

Modern coins tend to have milled edges if they were originally made of silver, regardless of the alloy used now.  So the US dime, quarter and half dollars have milled edges, because they had been made of silver from 1964 and earlier, while the penny and nickel have smooth edges because they were already made of base metal.  (Oddly, the 35% silver WW2 era nickels still had smooth edges.)  A few modern coins which were originally base metal had milled edges, such as the bronze Japanese 10 yen series (right).  They were switched to smooth edges a few years later (left) as the milling served no practical purpose.

The supply side for clipped coins can be explained by greed, in spite of the risks.  But what about the demand side?  Why would someone accept a clipped coin, or even a badly-worn coin as payment?  Sargent and Velde explain in “The Big Problem of Small Change” that many countries in the Middle Ages had chronic shortages of smaller denominations.  A group of small coins could easily substitute for a large one, but not the other way around.  (Unless one literally cut coins in halves or quarters to make change, which was done.  See the halved “short cross” penny, below.)

Small coins were more expensive to make per unit value than large ones, and were often underproduced.  Chronic shortages forced people to accept even underweight or clipped coins as payments, because good coins were so scarce.  In a sense, coin clippers were responding to an economic need for small change by partially devaluing the coin supply with ones which were light enough to circulate without being hoarded, but heavy enough to still be accepted.  If full-weight small coins had been plentiful, coin clippers would have had great difficulty passing off the products of their efforts.

What was the monetary system of the Danish West Indies (now US Virgin Islands)?

Short answer:  Before being sold to the United States in 1917, the Danish West indies used a dual monetary system of 100 cents equal to 1 daler, and also 100 bits equal to 1 franc, with 5 francs to the daler.

Below:  1815 Map of Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and the Danish West Indies (leftmost 3 green islands)  Image is out of copyright.  Source:  Wikimedia Commons

The West Indies were colonized by Denmark starting in the late 1600s.  The three largest islands are St. Thomas (annexed 1672), St. Jan/John (annexed 1718) and St. Croix (purchased from French West India Company 1733).  Like many small possessions without significant metal mining, they did not have their own coinage at first.  A mix of coinage from nearby colonies and European money probably circulated.  The first Danish coins marked specifically for use in the West Indies were the copper 1 and 2 skillings, under King Christian VI.  Like many Scandinavian coins, they have an elaborate monogram of the king on the obverse.

The monetary system was 96 skillings to the rigsdaler, based on a comparable system in use in Denmark at the time.  (Why 96 skillings? 12 penning = 1 skilling, 16 skillings = 1 mark, and 6 marks = 1 rigsdaler.  So 16 x 6 = 96 skilling to the rigsdaler.)  By the time the Danish West Indies had its own money, the penning was too small a denomination to be in use, so the skilling was the smallest monetary unit.  Denmark’s money was actually even more complicated that that.  In the 1700s, Denmark had two separate daler currenceies.  One was based on paper money which became devalued, and a separate silver daler was known as the rigsdaler specie.  (Here’s Wikipedia on the Danish rigsdaler history.)  Anyway, in the 1700s Danish West Indies, only a few denominations were actually minted for local use:  1, 2, 6, 12 and 24 skillings.  These were only minted occasionally and in relatively small quantities.  To make thinks even more confusing, the Danish West Indies skilling and rigsdaler were not equal to the Danish homeland ones, being worth 20% less.

In 1849, the West Indies rigsdaler was replaced by the daler.  A strange variety of countermarked coinage was produced from 1849-1859, including on some US copper and silver coinage.  In 1859, the daler was decimalized, with 100 cents equal to 1 daler.  Denmark itself only decimalized in 1873-5, as part of joining the Scandinavian Monetary Union and placing the currency on a gold standard.  In Denmark proper, the new decimal system had 100 øre = 1 krone.  Meanwhile, the Danish West Indies kept the daler unit.

In 1905, the Danish West Indies introduced a separate, parallel decimal system worth one fifth of the daler/cent.  100 bits equalled 1 franc, with 5 bits to the cent and 5 francs to the daler.  Coinage was minted with both denominations listed, as shown below.

Images:  5 and 10 bits, Danish West Indies, both 1905

Why would a Danish colony name one of its currency units after the French franc?  I don’t know for certain, but the French colonies in the Caribbean such as Haiti (before its independence in 1804) and Martinique were some of the most economically significant in the region, with profitable sugar and coffee plantations.  After decimalization, the franc seems to have been used informally as a denomination, equal to 20 cents, even though no coins labeled as francs were issued at first.  With the 1905 monetary reform, a gold 4 daler/20 franc coin was issued, with the exact same weight (6.4156) and fineness (0.900) as the French gold 20 franc coins of 1802-1914.

The Danish West Indies were a money-losing colony, and Denmark had been looking to sell them for a number of years by the early 20th century.  World War I provided the impetus, and in 1917 the islands were sold to the United States, and renamed as the US Virgin Islands.  The Danish West Indies were strategically important, and the US bought them in part to keep them out of German hands.  No need for a potential hostile U-boat base in the New World which could target shipping from the Panama Canal.  Denmark was neutral in World War I, but the wartime disruption of trade and the difficulty of defending its overseas possessions probably gave additional reasons for the sale.

As a US colony, the Virgin Islands kept the daler denomination for 17 years.  In 1934 they switched from the daler to the dollar, at a rate of 1 US dollar = 1.0363 daler.

Regarding the symbolism on the reverses of the 5 and 10 bit coins shown above, I haven’t found a specific reference.  They don’t appear to be from the Danish coat of arms, so I imagine they are specific to the Danish West Indies.  There are 3 crossed symbols:  a trident, a sickle and a caduceus staff.  I interpret these to represent the basis of the economy:  fishing (trident), agriculture (sickle) and trade (caduceus, the symbol of Hermes, patron god of commerce, and of confused health insurance companies).