Orphaned countries

atom

Which countries' coins are totally ignored for collecting?

pruebas

Not sure about ignored, but not many collectors of most of the African countries. You know, the ones with the bust of a dictator on the obverse.

WCC

In most countries, there is limited or no organized collecting. In most of Africa, there isn't really that much to collect either.

291fifth

Does anyone collect modern Eritrea? They have been independent from Ethiopia for nearly 30 years but I don't recall ever seeing anything about their modern coin issues. (I was stationed in Eritrea in 1971 when I was in the US Army - USASAFS, Asmara - Kagnew Station.

WCC

@291fifth said:
Does anyone collect modern Eritrea? They have been independent from Ethiopia for nearly 30 years but I don't recall ever seeing anything about their modern coin issues. (I was stationed in Eritrea in 1971 when I was in the US Army - USASAFS, Asmara - Kagnew Station.

Someone must somewhere.

Thirty years though doesn't provide sufficient variety to create a real market, limited as it is for these countries. It's similar to most other African countries where presumably Europeans and Americans buy the colonial coinage and NCLT and most (if not all) of the circulating coinage is ignored.

1984worldcoins

I collect all countries, some are very hard to get but not impossible. I am so happy with my collecting theme.

Sapyx

No country is "totally ignored", because a large proportion of world coin collectors are "one from every country" collectors. If coins exist for a country, then these collectors will want at least one.

@291fifth said:
Does anyone collect modern Eritrea? They have been independent from Ethiopia for nearly 30 years but I don't recall ever seeing anything about their modern coin issues.

Eritrea has been a one-party right-wing dictatorship embroiled in either a hot or cold war with Ethiopia ever since its independence. This hasn't been good for the economy. And for a good supply of circulating coinage, you need a stable economy. They made "circulating coins" on independence in 1997, but these quickly devalued to worthlessness and were never replaced.

There were some NCLT "coins" denominated in "dollars" issued shortly after Eritrea gained independence in 1993. However, I highly doubt that anyone in Eritrea at the time was aware of the existence of these "coins". They seem to be unofficial coins made entirely for the benefit of the one-fron-every-country collector.

There are also of course the coins struck by the Italians during the colonial period. The 1918 talleros are a particular favourite of mine.

The Eritrean currency, the nakfa, remains weak, propped up by government decree. In 2015, Eritrea annulled and replaced its entire stockpile of banknotes, because the majority of it existed outside the country in the hands of organized criminal people smugglers.