Israeli Coins - underappreciated Gems of historical coins
gashmios
Posts: 504 ✭✭✭
The appearance of first Jewish state in nearly 2000 years after generations of aspirations is a worthy historical event and it is celebrated in coins 
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
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the other half
You might want to give us more details and history... I'm pretty sure not many of us here read Hebrew (I don't).
Unless you're just picture dumping...
It is from the Spies.
Israeli coins are somewhat of a collecting niche, with three barriers to overcome.
First, some people who might normally collect world coins would refuse to collect Israeli coins simply for ideological reasons, disagreeing with the State of Israel's policies and politics and thus not wanting to support the Israeli government by buying their coins.
Second, there is the language barrier as noted by Samets above. Israeli coins rarely have English on them, and even the date is difficult to work out because it's written in Hebrew numerals using the Hebrew calendar. This same language barrier exists for Western collectors when it comes to Arabic and Chinese coins, making them all less popular than coins where the country-date-denomination can be clearly read in Western alphabet and numerals.
Finally, there's the art style. Israeli coins have a very specific and unique art style, driven in part by Orthodox Jewish religious sensitivity (the prohibition against "graven images" means that images of people and animals rarely feature, and even then are only placed on coins targeted at Western collectors rather than Israeli locals). The art style of the Israel Coins and Medals Corporation and the Israeli Mint are simply not to everyone's taste.
Many Israeli coin designs imitate designs used long ago, on coins of ancient Judaea. The bunch of grapes on the 25 prutot coin, for example, is derived from the bunch of grapes found on bronzes from the Bar Kochba revolt (132-133 AD): https://art.thewalters.org/object/59.803/
The grape leaf on the 50 prutot, likewise, is derived from the design of a bronze prutah of the First Revolt period (66-70 AD): https://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/musa_numismatic_art/193/product/judaea_first_jewish_war_ae_prutah_year_3_amphora__grape_leaf/1232609/Default.aspx
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded the DPOTD twice.
I totally agree with this.
Plus, the events commemorated are not relevant to non-Jewish people or Jews with little interest in the State of Israel.
Additionally:
In the 1960-80s (at least), Israel tried to bring in foreign money by marketing expensive precious metal NCLT commemoratives to wealthy Jews worldwide. Very much like the Franklin Mint. Many fell for it out of patriotism and altruism.
There is literally zero interest in that NCLT now or then (for all the reasons stated in the post above). The only thing that saved those "investors" was the rise of PMs (if they waited long enough and didn't die in the meantime). The Goldbergs made a fortune selling that c--p for those estates when it should have really just gone to the smelter. Just check the catalogs.
Nice proofs and specimens. Israeli coinage has given me a bit of grief lately while trying to build a set of albums for a fellow collector.
One aspect that gets me about the collective series is the sheer amount of mints that contributed to making the nation's coins and yet none of them included any mintmarks or privy marks to distinguish who made what.
Custom album maker and numismatic photographer.
Need a personalized album made? Design it on the website below and I'll build it for you.
https://www.donahuenumismatics.com/.
Many do but they are not well documented. These coins from Kings Norton Collection are from the English Mint, not from Israel itself. Technically, it is a pattern.
These early coins where designed from several ancient sources, but the symbolism of the grapes are from the Spies.
https://en.numista.com/197072
There is continuity. As for the commemoratives, there are just too many of them and many are targeted at Israel national interests. Many have become boring. The Metals are produced largely for the bullion sales. But few of the designs are interesting. I couldn't care less about Israeli Olympian Judo, for example, etc. This has turned out more like the Dutch Coin collections or the Perth mint. But the Biblical Arts coins have proven to have long value and interests, as do the wildlife coins, and many of the city designs. They sell out and are hard to find.
Bullion sells well. Many Jewish people believe in having precious metals and Jewels. Many Jewish people have bribed their way to freedom with concealed precious metals and diamonds. There are large diamond districts among Jewish communities in New York, Antwerp, and Israel and the coinage investments stems from that experience.
The bottom one commemorates the ancient Jewish community in Hebron
WIldlife coins
A 10 Prutah special strike
Less commonly collected -
and circulating strikes
Standard Half Sheckel
Piefort set
One of my favorites..
The two sheckel Akko commem - in silver. Really a great coin and design
From the Birds of the Holyland series.
BIblical Art Series - Elisha and the Chariot
Biblical Art - Splitting of the Red Sea.. this one is a harder one to acquire.
Chocolate.
Being Israeli born, I cam perhaps give perspective why I don't believe they are popular or collected by Israelis. While Jewish history in the land is rich as are ancient coins related to Jews (Bar Kochba, Judea Capta issues) the modern issues were minted in 1948 onwards with the following :
1) An attempt to mimic ancient coin motifs on the modern coinage which does not carry a similar appeal
2) Bland, sequential series of Prutah, Lira and Shekel denominations over time
3) A much more attractive run of artistic and historic banknotes parallel to the coin series
4) Very modern (almost NCLT) look across issues
5) Mass production of commemoratives now likely being melted as they carry little numismatic value.
6) Still a young nation in its modern form post British Mandate which has been focused on building industry, infrastructure as well as survival. Collecting is not as mainstream as in other countries yet I believe will evolve with more knowledge and wealth creation.
Interestingly, British Mandate of Palestine coins are highly sought after without carrying much in terms of design running a series of 59 coins in total by denominations..
There are a handful of Israel coins I keep for historic reasons such as this1948 25 Mils war of independence issue (40K or so issued, aluminum metal) which presents quite a challenge to find in MS.
TalerUniverse.com is a curated numismatic project dedicated to the silver talers, crowns, and medals of the Habsburg Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, spanning the 16th–18th centuries. The collection emphasizes historically significant issues, rare mint varieties, and high-grade NGC/PCGS examples, presented with detailed historical context, scholarly references, and high-resolution photography. TalerUniverse aims to serve both as a private collection showcase and a growing reference resource for collectors, researchers, and students of early-modern European coinage.
I only have 3 Israeli NCLT coins in my collection. They are required for my World Coins Manufactured by Mints of the United States Type Set :
These were actually minted in United States by the San Francisco mint.
I do agree with everything written above. Seems like a ton of bullion issues, most early releases were sold in poor packaging so at least hunting for a nice and clean or attractively toned, high grade coins is a real hunt...
Don't forget the medals!
Lots of designs. This is one of my favorites.
many great medals.
One of my favorites - (insert shameless plug)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/227197504078
that is very cool...
http://www.mrbrklyn.com/coins/israeli/solomon_ship_2.jpg
I checked out your website and it appears to me that you built it yourself, which is fun and impressive. Just some friendly advice, you should focus on organizing the content into separate pages and leave a table of contents with links on your home page.
Custom album maker and numismatic photographer.
Need a personalized album made? Design it on the website below and I'll build it for you.
https://www.donahuenumismatics.com/.
Thanks for the advise since I've been doing this blind since 1996 and could really use design input. I now have 19 domains that I control with content and another 8 or 10 that other domains that other groups and people use on my servers. Plus there is a few mirrors for software projects. I need to do this while still maintaining my Pharmacist professional activities.
That link was just to an image, not any web pages. Most people block seeing directories of images and documents, but I'm fine with it. If you want to view through the some thousands of images, have fun. Not all of them are good, but it can be fun.
This site is built entirely for pleasure, although I hope it can be educational for others and it is designed to share.
http://www.mrbrklyn.com/coins.html
That is the main coin section.
It has two coin menus that point to a majority of my coin write ups since the 1990s. A lot of the coins featured on it were stolen.
It is broken down to a US section and a World and Ancient section, but if I had to do it again, I might break the menues up differently.
In addition to the write ups, there are tons of images which could be more organized if I cared enough to do so since much of the images are image dumps from my old film scanners to the modern cameras. They sit on a 12 tetrabyte external USB3 drive connected to the webserver running on Artix Linux, with Apache, modperl, and a few other techs that ave come and gone over the decades. There is a general gallery of all the images under http://images.mrbrklyn.com which includes far more than coins. There is a lot of linux stuff, multigenerational family images, museum visits, graduate scool related thing, travel logs from Europe, Israel, and the US, my published works, developmental stuff for publicaitons and research, and lots of stuff from my six kids etc etc.
People have asked to help organize it, but I'm seriously not interested in folks mucking with my stuff. In addition, there are links to external websites all over the internet and just moving things can break continuity for other sites that I would rather not break. Linux filesystem links helps with some of that, but it still takes time and is tedious.
So it is what it is. It is a nearly 30 year old website that predates the vast majority of the internet and it is OKay if it is not perfect.
BTW - for Dinosaurs - there was this:
http://www.mrbrklyn.com/calgary.html
It is a detail of the AKKO UNESCO coin - 2 coin set which just a breathtaking design
Hi @mrbrklyn, this coin of yours in one of the images above actually looks like an error coin. It seems to be struck on an undersized planchet and some of the detail is off the flan
It looks like a 25 Agorot piece struck on a 10 Agorot planchet. You might want to weigh it (outside the cardboard holder) - a 25 Agorot should weigh 6.5 grams, but if I'm right and it's a wrong planchet error, it would weigh only 5 grams (for a 10 Agorot planchet)
That is cool. When I get to the Pharmacy I will weigh it. I am not an error collector but this can be cool. I think I found an error variety also in the NZ Kingfisher coin.
LOL, it's clearly a normal coin in a holder that's too small for it.
totally awesom
They have a new commem released fo current events
Here are a couple of commemoratives
Not legal tender.
But I like what they commemorated .
I give away money. I collect money.
I don’t love money . I do love the Lord God.
The Holyland mint deals with many of these metals and they are often very very nice. The US Mints does as well, BTW, but it is not as broadly pushed.
I have two or three of the Operation Jonathan in silver and several in bronze. Unless gold falls off a cliff I doubt I'll ever add the gold.
I can't afford the gold. I go for the silver in these. When you get them from the mint they are really spetacular but my experience on the after market is that the coins are often finger printed etcc... just abused. That makes getting them from the mint is often worth the premium... at least for me. I just have to have the spare money which between Purim and Peseach is a good question.
Aside from using my coin budget for what I actually want to buy, this applies to me too. I don't have anywhere near as broad of an interest as you, but it's much wider than most. But this disqualifies practically all non-Western coinage to me.
I'd like to own a First Jewish Revolt shekel, but I have better uses for the $5K to $10 it costs.
I can see that the limited variety to collect with a direct cultural connection limits the appeal to those who are or might otherwise be inclined to collect it. This is the same opinion I hold for other developing countries with a limited history of striking their own coinage too. There certainly is no shortage of affluence.
I've noticed this too.
Israel gold medal Balfour Declaration 1917 by Paul Vincze struck in 1967, 50 year anniversary and year of Israel's Six Day War
As a Christian I like the biblical themes of their coinage. Along with the unique contemporary designs. However, as was said earlier there is a big language barrier.
I started collecting coins in the early 1960's and owned a copy of A Catalog of Modern World Coins by R. S. Yeoman.
In the book under Israel was a coin with an elephant on it which I was later able to obtain.
Israel 1 Lira 1961 Elephant
Copper-nickel, 32.2 mm, 14.2 gm
The coin commemorates the sacrifice of Jewish soldier Eleazar who charged a war elephant in BC 162 during the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire. The Hanukkah holiday commemorates the revolt.
The Mysterious Egyptian Magic Coin
Coins in Movies
Coins on Television