NEWP Interesting Israeli error coin
desslok
Posts: 313 ✭✭✭
It doesn't look impressive, but I believe this coin is among my rarest acquisitions.
It is an Israeli 5 Shekel piece of the 1-year commemorative reverse type, which at first glance appears to be weakly struck or struck through grease (or may even look like a badly counterfeited coin). However, I believe this coin is stuck on a planchet intended for a different foreign coin: a German 1 Deutsche Mark planchet.
Let's backtrack -
This is how aA normal Israeli 5 Shekel piece looks like. It is 24mm in diameter, weighs 8.2 grams, and struck on a 12-sided planchet. Minted from 1990 onwards in a quantity of a few million every year, probably at least 50 million were stuck in all dates combined.
In 1990, a limited edition version was issued with a commemorative reverse featuring Levi Eshkol, Israel's second Prime Minister. The mintage figure for this issue is 1.5 million. Not rare or scarce by any means, but still a much lower mintage than the regular production runs.
Then we have the coin I started this post with. It is round and weighs just 5.5 grams - that's 33% less than the nominal.
I've done a bit of research, and found that the 5 Shekel coins of 1990 were all minted in Stuttgart, Germany. So I searched for some other foreign coin struck in Stuttgart in the very same year, to try to identify which planchet this coin may have been struck on, and found a very likely candidate: the German 1 Deutsche Mark coin (pre-Euro) was struck in Stuttgart in the very same year, on a copper-nickel planchet, 23.5mm wide and exactly 5.5 grams in weight. So I believe this coin is struck on this German planchet.
Comments
That sounds very interesting. Maybe a planchet that was left in a bin somewhere got mixed in. At least, that's how they were trying to explain the steel/copper mix ups at the US mint for the wartime cents. Makes sense though.
Are error coins a popular thing to collect for Israel?
desslok - great having you back here. The depth of your research is impressive and I think its highly likely its on a Mark planchet. Where did you find this one?
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+1 agreed!
That is a true collector indeed.
Not so much, no. I'm in contact with about 6-7 other enthusiasts such as myself, but overall it is a very rare field of collecting. We joke here that the only thing rarer than these coins are the collectors that care about them.
As for Zohar's question of where did I find it, it was purchased from a local vest-pocket dealer that knows what I collect and is sometimes looking out for stuff for me.
++1 That's what makes this place so special. Everyone is an expert in their own little corner of numismatics. We feed on each other.