Coins of Malta

harasha

First of all, a joyous day to you all.

I celebrated this morning by viewing a news story, on EuroNews, about Noel Galea Bason, an important coin and medal engraver from Malta.
Of course, this inspires me to think about still ANOTHER project, possibly collecting the coins of Malta.
Any random thoughts about this?

With the NYINC days away, a new project may be timely.

Sapyx

Malta has had several periods of coinage issue.

In ancient times, the Greek/Phoenician colonists on the island (known as Melita in Greek) issued their own coinage. Typically of fairly crude style, they are nevertheless popular with collectors of "biblical places" (towards the end of the Book of Acts, the apostle Paul was shipwrecked on Malta).

In mediaeval times, the Knights of St John used the island as their base after they were ousted from Rhodes, and issued European/Italian style coinage. Napoleon kicked them out in 1798.

Nowadays, there are two coin-issuing "Maltas": the island (now a republic) has issued coins since 1972. Malta is apparently going to join the Euro in a few days, making the current coinage of mils, cents and pounds a fairly short series to collect.

The Knights of Malta, the same knights that Napoleon kicked off the island and now based in Rome, also continue to issue their own "coins" (which are now listed in Krause's "Unusual" catalogue, though they used to be listed in the main Krauses).

MrEureka

I've always liked these:



MALTA.Alofius de Wignacourt AD 1601-1622.AR.4 Tari 1611 (10.13g., 30mm)

Although this one is not mine, I do have a similar piece in my collection.

lordmarcovan

harasha

I actually have a Scudo from 1738, courtesy of Karl Stephens. I had obtained it when I was putting together a world coin sampler.
I also have a 1/3 farthing from 1902, I believe. I have no idea from whence it came. I seem to remember having it when I was a little kid. I think it was from some bulk lot of world coins.

What I am contemplating is a collection of the recent period, maybe the past 35 years or so. I can keep the collection relatively small, but varied.

keithmalta

Dear all
I'm happy to see my country Malta being discussed here.
I have got my hands on a few mint Maltese euro coins. These are expected to be very interesting collectables since similar smaller countries that adopted the euro (eg Vatican San Marino and Monaco) had their coins taken off the market by collectors and they are unfindable most of the times.

If you're interesting in these coins, please drop me a line on keith@keithz.com

Thanks
Keith

tonyhar

Keith.

I have just ordered a couple of euro sets from Maltapost. I look forward to having them in hand.

keithmalta

great- that's a nice set indeed