Suez Canal Token

tbishopric

I’m interested in tokens from the Suez Canal in Egypt. There are three canal token series that I know about. The first two series have dates of 1865, during the construction of the canal from 1859 to 1869.
1. Borel Lavalley
2. CH & A Bazin
3. Société coopérative du canal de Suez

The pieces from the Société Coopérative du Canal de Suez are sometimes listed as being from the construction period, but they are dated 1892 (over 20 years after the canal had been built). I am having trouble finding references to the specific organization, Société Coopérative du Canal de Suez, but it must have been involved in operations of the canal. Anyone know more about this particular series?

Top50SetBuilder

I would think Lecompte would cover these and have some information about them

tbishopric

I thought all of those books were in French, which I cannot read. I'll see if I can find one.

carabonnair

They might be in one of the Gadoury books. I had one of these tokens, but sold it to Allen Berman years ago.

IVB

An interesting article about one of the tokens in this series.
Taken from here https://www.bulletin-numismatique.fr/bn/pdf/bn061.pdf and translated by Google Translate.

Numismatics can make us discover many faults, of all imaginable categories, since some make it their unique collection theme.

Our reader Peter Kraneveld, points out an absolutely extraordinary fault in our colonies shop.

Obviously, this fault has not been noticed or reported before: it is the smallest value of the Suez Canal Co-operative series, obviously a 5 centimes when you look at the series, but which indisputably bears 0.5 centime as its face value.

I don't remember such a case and it seems logical: even if we disregard everything, what remains of a currency is still the value for which it is put into circulation.
...
It is more than probable that this fault circulated for its expected value and not for its registered value, its circulation zone being more than small and probably confined to a few hundred people Besides, for the fellahs working at the Canal, these so-called Arabic numerals had to be legible and the size served as a standard...

Michel Prieur

tbishopric

Indeed most references I've seen say the coin is a 5 centimes piece, but clearly it is written as a 1/2 cent value. I guess it was a design flaw that no one noticed until it was too late. Those 5 Franc and 2 Franc pieces are rare. The whole series is hard to collect. Some references say there is only one known 1 Franc piece, but that isn't correct. Those seem to be the "easiest" to find. NGC says "1 known." with a value of $3,200. There are a couple for sale on eBay today. I certainly didn't pay that price for my example.

https://www.ngccoin.com/price-guide/world/egypt-franc-km-tn11-1892-cuid-1054818-duid-1241597

tbishopric

And that complete set in the photo above sold for 5800 Euros.

https://www.cgbfr.com/egypte-canal-de-suez-serie-complete-5-10-et-50-centimes-1-2-et-5-francs-de-la-societe-cooperative-du-canal-de-suez-1892-sup,fco_144573,a.html

carabonnair

Here is the one I owned.