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Least value circulation coin against the dollar
rmuniak
Posts: 267 ✭✭✭
just posted a 1965 1 lira coin from Turkey https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces1341.html with a valuation of .00000003760 USD . Read an article from a few years back saying the 1 tiyin from Uzbekistan was the least valuable . It is listed here https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces1471.html as .0000011 USD..
Are there other coins like this or is this coin valuation incorrect?
Tagged: turkey
A world without coins "Chaos"
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In the early 80s we took a family trip to Brazil - when we got there it was something like 1250 Cruzeros to the dollar, and when we left a few weeks later it was 2500. Thing was, they had a 10 Cruzero coin - which to my eye, looked to be about the same dimensions as a quarter. To this day, my official position is that I have no idea how so many Brazilian coins ended up in video arcade games spread throughout Traverse City Michigan in those years.
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I think it was 9 turkish lira to us dollars in 1965, so the coin would have been about .11 dollars when issued. It likely stopped circulatong once its melt value exceeded fave value - even steel has some value.... Turkey had a currency revaluation as well around 2007 I think, so it may not be legal tender. I remembet several Indian denominations struck in steel were being melted down to make razor blades when their fave value fell too far.
When I lived in Ukraine 2008-10 the 1 kopyok coin was about 7 to a cent. Now it is 27 to a US cent. They are still legal tender, but the mint in Kyiv eliminated minting them in 2014.
Ukraine, huh? I won't touch that one right now.
It seems to me the US penny wins this since it's worth about -5c when the lobbying, mining, pollution, public health threat, handling, and minting costs are all added together.
At least other countries don't spend so much money on their less than worthless coins. Also manpower costs are much higher in the US.
The USA sure influenced what went on there for quite a while, especially 2014 - now as they say - bottom rail on top now!
There is an old 1891 short story "The Bottle Imp" by Robert Louis Stevenson which is about a cursed bottle.
To get rid of the bottle one must sell it for less than he/she paid for it.
One buyer purchased it for one (US) cent and to sell it he goes to Tahiti where they use centimes worth 1/5 of a cent.
The Mysterious Egyptian Magic Coin
Coins in Movies
Coins on Television
As I posted in your thread on this topic on another forum, the question is not simple. Your Turkish lira, for example, is from the "old lira", and is no longer legal tender; no coins in Turkey older than the 2009 currency revaluation are in circulation (thought he street hawkers like to sell the old 100,000 and 200,00 lira coins to tourists who think they're getting a great deal). The smallest coin currently in "use" in Turkey is the 1 (new) kurus, equivalent to 10,000 old lira. Though in Turkey, virtually everywhere you go all the prices are rounded to the nearest lIra so you never see even the 50 kurus coin in circulation.
Likewise, the Uzbekistan tiyin might still be (theoretically) legal tender (until next year, when they officially become obsolete), but they are no longer produced and obviously no longer in use, unless someone happens to own a wheelbarrowfull of them to buy a loaf of bread. The smallest coin currently being produced is the 50 s'om, worth 5000 tiyin.
And as i pointed out, as far as I am aware, in terms of producing coins for circulation and that actually circulate, I believe Moldova wins. The Moldovan leu is worth about 5 US cents right now, and they still make and use 1 ban coins (1/100th of a leu). 1 ban is worth 0.0565 (about 1/18th) of a US cent.
As a general rule, such extreme edge-cases of countries issuing worthless coins comes about from a government in denial about the existence of and cause of inflation, where the official policy is that the collapse in value of the currency is being caused by an international conspiracy of Westerners, colonialists and/or Jews who are trying to overthrow their government by economic means. Using these tiny coins is thus seen as the patriotic duty of the citizenry.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD.
Odd how history repeats itself. Because DeGaulle and his monetary advisers revalued 100 Old Francs to 1 New Franc at an early stage in the French Fifth Republic, a very similar set up in comparison to the U.S. Dollar prevailed almost to the adoption of the Euro coinage in 2002. The exchange rate for the French Franc varied between 4 to the Dollar and 7 to the Dollar over the course of many years, and frequently the new one centime coin was worth about one-fifth of a U.S. cent. Typically, the one centime coin was hard to obtain after 1960 and the small bronze five centimes was the smallest coin that one actually encountered in circulation. But the steel one centimes did still exist if one looked for them.
Back in 1973 my families Christmas present was a trip to Colombia! At the time their Peso was worth 4 cents and they did have 1 centavos!. That was during the oil embargo and gas prices here were 50+ Cent per gallon. In Columbia gas was 4 cents a gallon. The downside was the cost of owning a car. If my memory serves the import tax on a car was something like 4000 percent! I believe the newest car I saw was a late 1950's model.
Now for the coin collecting side. The only way I was able to find any coins was from candy vendors on the streets of Bogota. I wandered the streets everyday buying up all the coins the vendors could spare. By the last day word had gotten out and I was approached by a man offering to sell me 2 coins. By that time I was almost out of money and had probably accumulated around 10 pounds of coins from the Candy vendors.(I couldn't even get coins from the banks!) It helped that I was reasonably fluent in Spanish at the time....my only hurdle was getting people to speak slowly! I informed the man all I had left was 400 Pesos. He was disappointed but actually sold me the 2 coins. I wasn't sure of the ID but they were old and 1 was silver so I bought them. 1 was an 1859 Bolivia 4 Sols and the other was an 1821 Brazil copper 80 Reis. Turns out they were worth about what I paid for them at the time.
The downside of the trip for me was witnessing real poverty for the 1st time. There was always a group of poor kids in front of the hotel begging for money. I have a picture ingrained in my head of a small boy jabbing his amputated nub of an arm at me saying dame dinero.
They changed to the "new lira" in I think 2005 (1 million old to one new lira). All the old coins and notes were then demonetized. I remember tipping the toilet attendant 500,000 before the conversion.
I agree that the real question should be, which are the lowest value coins actually being produced. The Moldovan coin is a great example, and for me the Russian one kopek coin is the first to come to mind. From what I’ve read, a very small quantity was minted in 2017, and those now have a high collector value even though their nominal value is around 1/65 of a US cent. The last circulation mintage was in 2014 for use in Crimea. Believe it or not, they were minted in quantity through the 2000’s, and even with the stronger ruble at that time they were still only worth about 1/30 of a cent. During that time I personally encountered them in use. I distinctly remember receiving some in change at the Lenta supermarket in St. Petersburg maybe even as late as 2009.
However, during my last trip there this past summer I don’t remember receiving any coins smaller than a ruble.