Question: Are there any gold coins in circulation today whose face value (far) exceeds its gold cont

RBinTex

Just curious.

SaorAlba

About 20 years ago Japan minted 100,000 Yen commemoratives which were then worth a bit less than US $1000 where the face value greatly exceeded the melt value at the time. Because of that they were counterfeited. Now with the spike in gold prices the metal is worth more than the face value.

adamlaneus

How about an even simpler question:

Are there any gold coins in circulation today?

Any at all?

Weiss

Maybe not so much circulation as still legal tender?

newsman

This one circulates in part of the Islamic world, though it's not been officially adapted by any country.

DorkGirl

<< <i>How about an even simpler question:

Are there any gold coins in circulation today?

Any at all? >>



Interesting...I would of thought that the answer was no

ProofArtworkonCircs

<<Maybe not so much circulation as still legal tender?>>

All coins of the United States are legal tender with the POSSIBLE exception of trade dollars and excessive amounts of small change.
That would make U. S. gold coins legal tender.

Sapyx

Most of the gold "coins" produced by various mints and countries are "legal tender" - indeed, I believe the difference between a "coin" and a "round" is that some country somewhere has declared it legal tender.

But so far as actually using gold coins for everyday commerce and trade, no. Nobody uses them anymore.

SaorAlba

<< <i>

But so far as actually using gold coins for everyday commerce and trade, no. Nobody uses them anymore. >>



As long as gold coins are bought sold etc, they are still used. I remember a home sale in Florida from the last couple of years where the buyer paid the seller with 800 Krugerrands. I wouldn't mind finding that sort of a buyer for my other home.

ProofArtworkonCircs

<<Most of the gold "coins" produced by various mints and countries are "legal tender" - indeed, I believe the difference between a "coin" and a "round" is that some country somewhere has declared it legal tender.>>

Not quite. Many coins were issued that were not legal tender such as United States large cents and half cents when first issued.

These became legal tender in 1933, if not before. Small cents, at least, were legal tender in 1857.

Scotland, today, has no legal tender paper money in circulation.

Sapyx

<< <i>As long as gold coins are bought sold etc, they are still used. I remember a home sale in Florida from the last couple of years where the buyer paid the seller with 800 Krugerrands. I wouldn't mind finding that sort of a buyer for my other home. >>


These krugerrands were not being used as money, but as bullion. The house wasn't "sold" in the conventional sense of the word, it was bartered.

Does any government anywhere in the world today issue gold coins with a given face value, and that government then pegs it's currency to gold to ensure that the amount of gold in the coin is always equal to the stated face value? No. No country is on the "gold standard" anymore. And that's what you need to have happen for a gold coin to successfully "circulate".

That being said, you can find numerous examples of non-circulating coins with face value way in excess of metal value. The Cook Islands are an excellent example of this. The Perth Mint persuaded them to issue vast amounts of silver $50 coins with less than an ounce of silver in them, in the 1990's. The Cook Islands dollar is on par with the New Zealand dollar, worth about two-thirds of a US dollar; there was far less than $50 worth of silver in them. When they were first issued, the Cook Islands were happy to rake in the huge seigniorage profits from selling such coins, safe in the knowledge that nobody would ever bother flying halfway around the world to try to redeem them. But when "tourists" actually started turning up with suitcases full of coins they'd purchased overseas from bullion dealers for only a fraction of face value, redeeming the coins and making enough profit to pay for the trip, the Cook Islands government acted swiftly to demonetize and prohibit the importation of their own "coins".

Governments are sometimes prepared to cop a loss, but not a large loss, and not for a prolonged period. I think you'd find that governments, especially cash-strapped ones, will always do this whenever people notice that the face value of their coins greatly overshadows the bullion value. It's also why the face value on most modern bullion coins is so ridiculously low.

SaorAlba

Some of those Pacific island countries like the Marshall Islands were doing that too, those $5 Desert Storm coins etc. Another is Liberia. But these places have questionable governments and even more questionable coin issuing authority than in the traditional sense.

SaorAlba

<< <i>
Scotland, today, has no legal tender paper money in circulation. >>



After 1983 when the Bank of England ditched the pound note in favour of the coin indeed, before then the Bank of England One Pound note was the only legal tender in Scotland besides coin. Coin is only legal tender up to a certain amount, then common law recognises that it is more of a nuisance than a tender. All three note issuing Scottish banks, Clydesdale Bank, Bank of Scotland, and Royal Bank have to keep an equivalent with the Bank of England as an assurance that the note issue is sustainable. Recently RBS has gotten into some dire straights there, because raising cash to equivalent the note issue became a challenge when you were already being bailed out by the Crown.

Scotland's banking system worked just fine for 314 years, but recently it got too big, grew way out, branching into USA stuff etc, and thus have suffered far more dire consequences than the English banking crisis's of the 19th and early 20th century.

GritsMan

<< <i>This one circulates in part of the Islamic world, though it's not been officially adapted by any country. >>



Fascinating! Had no idea...