Need help with an ID but I don't have a scan,sorry. :(

sliderider

I was flea market scrounging today and came across a table run by an elderly gentleman with a thick eastern european accident. He had lots of things, coins and silver serving ware, watches, books, and lots of antiques. He had a box on the table with silver medallions and coins so I peeked in and dug out three of them that looked like the best of the bunch. One was a 1934 Panama Blaboa, probably VF another was a one ounce silver round or medallion of Franz Josef 1with a coin like bust and legend on the obverse and a scales on the reverse and one ounce, .999 fine silver 31.1 grams. The third one is the puzzler. It is in arabic. I assume it is Egyptian. It is also a silver crown size coin. Date is 1907. It has a picture of what appears to be an slave from ancient times walking to the left with a torch raised in his right hand and his left hand points behind towards an arc of arabic writing along the rim. His head faces behind him. He has broken shackles dangling from both wrists. Under his right elbow is more arabic and the date 1907 is just below that. The reverse has a symbol that looks like spread wings with two cobras and what I think is the sun in the middle. In the center above the wings is a 0 followed by a diamond, which I think is the number 10 in arabic. THere is some small arabic below that and the year 1907-and then some arabic numerals that I don't understand. It looks like 1 followed by a backwards facing 7, a V then a 0. Across the top is more arabic. Does anyone know what this is??

sliderider

Wow, I found one on ebay.

Mysterious Egyption coin

rwhite

If you have a Krause, in the front is a great number conversion chart. Western, Arabic, Asain, and everything else... a great tool for world coin collectors.

tbirde56

That is the 1956 Egyptian 50 piastres commemorating the British evacuation of the country. It had a mintage of 250,000 and contains .8102 of an ounce of silver.

sliderider

Thanks for info. I am now trying to figure out where this Franz Josef I silver round came from. It has nothing to indicate the minter. The front has a right facing bust with laurels and around the edge it says FERENCZ JOZSEF I.K.A.CS.ES M.H.S.D.O.AP.KIR. and initials K.B. under the bust. The reverse is described above. It is worn to the point where I would only say it was F-VF condition, so it was obviously passed around a bit. I know there are still places in the world where people distrust paper money and still use silver and gold for transactions, so maybe it was circulated?? The man I bought it from was Eastern European and Franz Josef was I believe Hungarian, so that fits. Maybe this was the product of a mint over there, but it doesn't seem to fit that the reverse should be in English. What is a good source for exo-numis info for pieces like this??