Least collected modern coins

Hello friends, 

 is there a way to find which modern (1945-2020) circulating coins are least wanted and collected? 

Is Federal German pfennigs the answer that you are looking for?

ArnoV

Is Federal German pfennigs the answer that you are looking for?

I wouldn't be sure - according to very low rarity index, they are in many collections!

The “problem” with them is regardless of if you want to collect them or not most people already own them because there are just so damn many of them in any convolute of world coins similar to French centimes (at least in Europe) or coins from transitioning economies of the eastern bloc. But yes, not really fitting the question 100%.

To answer the question I would say anything produced for collectors like the souvenir “coins” of the sandbank nations.

Someone made some wheat pennies and 1959-1981 pennies little bit less common by mel them down and making them into Japanese sword on YouTube 

Straight away I would guess the following.

1. Modern Euro change coins, except for commem 2 Euros - especially if its not perfect condition

2. Ex currencies of Euro states, especially French francs, German marks, Spanish Pesetas - especially the lower value coins like ones with a face value under 50 Eurocents and super especially the ones under 5 eurocents. Just worthless stuff, worth almost nothing and no way to dispose of it.

3. Anything made out of aluminium or any other really cheap metal like plated steel. Not so much zinc, as it had some interesting and older coins like WW1 emergency coinages.

4. Inflation era coins from Latin America, Africa and Arab countries such as 20 centavos from Brazil 1973 etc. Especially if they are worn.

5. Coins in a non western script of weird sizes and cheap construction (Aluminium 5 fils of Iraq) or other Arab and Asian states.

6. Base metal coins of Indian and Subcontinent nations (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh), usually cheap, awful and common as dirt. Post 1947 coins, not Raj era or Indian states, they have a demand going on. Coins like silver rupees, gold pagodas and mohurs will always be desirable.

Last one is a real surprise.

For many collectors and especially less well off ones - Modern NCLT coins - especially if well overpriced and base metal (Like Australian $1 and $2 NCLT that is like $15 for a $1 coin, and also overpriced gold and silver coins (Like a NZ 1 ouhnce silver commem that costs $159 + $20 postage and handling, when its worth $53 in silver and the topic will be forgotten in a year or two (Royal anniversary, some silly conference, sporting achievement).

Bonus one - here in the British Commonwealth, any coin that celebrates a member of the British royal family - they issue mountains of coins for Royal Jubilees, for QE2 you get coins for 25th, 40th, 50th, 55th, 60th, 65th, 70th etc and then wedding anniversaries up to 75, Princes being born and people marrying etc. Most of these have suitable initial interest and plummet really quickly. Even worse are the cheap cupronickel crowns issued by the UK in 1972, 77, 80 and 81 and they were celebrating Queen E2 and Diama. Now you can't give them away, even silver coins of these anniversaries are worth melt at most and there is a glut of them.

Bad enough is the British minting buckets of them, but you get all the British Islands like Jersey and Guernsey, Isle of Man and then numerous flyspeck Carribean islands like Grenada, St Vincent, St something else, Dominica (The British one not the Hispanic country), Turks and Caicos along with coins for St. Helena and Tristian Da Cunha (An island with 250 descendants of 19th century shipwrecks) and Pitcairn Island (An island of people descended from a 1780s pirate vessel). All these places issue boatloads of “crowns” celebrating Diana, the Queens 43rd wedding anniversary etc next to coins showing Marilyn Monroe and Mickey Mouse.

I won't say Niue, as the volume of coins issued, means someone must be buying them and collecting them.

Also in the British world, another unloved coin is the 1965 Churchill Crown. Nealry 20 million issued and featuring a very ugly portrait of an ugly and horrible man (Yes he won WW2, but was responsible for Gallipoli and a well known racist). Add to that just one type and was sold at face value in 1965. These coins are so common and worthless, no one wants them.

Of course a rare type with the designers initials is worth 5 figures, but there are like 10 of them out of nearly 20 million and no doubt ebay scammers screaming with poorly spelled listings like “BAHGAIN, REAR ERA worth 20 biilion ruppees - only USD $9999.99 PLUS $1234.67 Postage and Papackaging, $898.78 shippage and $324 pen wear and hasselage”, and the coin will be a standard one. There is also a satin finish version which is insanely rare, yet some bunny will claim to have one for sale on Ebay.

One dealer has been trying to sell 100X Churchills for like $220 for the past year and is wondering why no one is even looking at them, let alone buying them. They are also big hunks of worthless cupronickel, if they had some silver - then there would be some interest. The same dealer is also trying to flog off similar size Dianas, Lizzie and Philly 25th weddings and 1977 silver jubilee crowns and again NO ONE, I read NO ONE is biting.

Another unwanted coin is the Benjamin Bunny commemorative 50p from 2017 I think. Unlike other Beatrix Potter themed coins - it was issued in jumbo quantities (20 million - peanuts next to the billion or so commem quarters of the USA each year). Some YT channels even have people tagging the coins and putting them into circulation.

And the 1967 UK penny, a mintage of 660 million compared to 159 million in 1966 and less than 100 million every other year, means the coin has little collectibility and as it was the last circulating penny (Just for you pedantic types who will say “What about the 1970 penny” a one off proof set issue that did not generally circulate (I say that as no doubt a few tried to). Apparently bulk lots of old UK pennies, reveal around ⅓ of them of average have 1967 pennies in them and not all are shiny UNC (The coin was minted from 1967 through to mid 1970, yet the date was frozen with 1967 on it).

The only good thing about Churchills, Benjamin Bunnies and 1967 Pennies, is that they are usually found UNC and decent sized well made coins much better than say some aluminium rubleniks from some Communist stan or inflation era Hispanic coin.

For me lower price of a coin is an advantage, not a shortcoming. Inexpensive coins can keep you busy for lifetime without making you poor. Less expenses for collecting mean spared money for other daily needs.

The Churchill crown is not very cheap coin, it is rather expensive (2 or 2.5 euro or so). There are many other coins which are more affordable. It is almost impossible to obtain all the commemoratives from around the globe. It is more prudent to limit oneself to some country or subject, or set the limits concerning the price.

More to the point: what coins are least collected? I cannot answer for the whole world. In my own country (Lithuania) all the local coins are very desirable. For example, the latest NCLT (a cube-shaped object) was sold out in minutes. Also there is a big local market for world coins of cheapest kind. Russian, German, Polish, UK and USA coins are sought after and loved.  Supposedly “exotic” coins (from more distant countries) are less desirable when they are more expensive, but there is some market for them as well.

numinis

For me lower price of a coin is an advantage, not a shortcoming. Inexpensive coins can keep you busy for lifetime without making you poor. Less expenses for collecting mean spared money for other daily needs.

The Churchill crown is not very cheap coin, it is rather expensive (2 or 2.5 euro or so). There are many other coins which are more affordable. It is almost impossible to obtain all the commemoratives from around the globe. It is more prudent to limit oneself to some country or subject, or set the limits concerning the price.

More to the point: what coins are least collected? I cannot answer for the whole world. In my own country (Lithuania) all the local coins are very desirable. For example, the latest NCLT (a cube-shaped object) was sold out in minutes. Also there is a big local market for world coins of cheapest kind. Russian, German, Polish, UK and USA coins are sought after and loved.  Supposedly “exotic” coins (from more distant countries) are less desirable when they are more expensive, but there is some market for them as well.

Yes that’s a very good way of looking at it. It’s all relative to where one is located and the spending power of the individual. Every Era of Indian coins are extremely sought after in India, especially in the last 20 years as the economy has grown and people have more disposable income. The sheer size of the population and the diaspora across the world means that there is even more demand externally as well. In Canada where I’m located, Indian coins are not in demand as much domestically, it’s mostly Canadian and US coinage with European coinage a fair bit behind. However that said, at the last Toronto coin show, I was quite surprised how many people showed interest in Indian and Asian coinage; granted those were relatively older pre-1950s atleast which tends to float around here more easily than newer coinage 

A few words on those old German Pfennig coins mentioned in the first reply.

In the old days, children tried to get a new year as soon as possible and usually kept the coin as it was a nice and shiny one.

So in many cases - like mine - this was the very first basis of a collection. Of course after a while you realized that there are different letters (=mints) around, and you maybe became interested in also getting the previous years and there it goes…. This was a very inexpensive way to start a collection.

Of course in the meantime many of those collections went back to Bundesbank, still today you can buy them for very little money…

Israeli NCLTs and their coins in general seem to be very unpopular, more than other countries from what I've seen

Coins of some countries are hard to find (for example Equatorial Guinea, Guyana) and have medium-level “Numista Rarity Index”.  These are usually countries no few people visit, or that issued few coins.

Minor medium-grade coins of some countries have very low average prices (Germany, Switzerland, Guyana).

The least wanted and collected will be the intersection of these — high rarity index, but low price.  I don’t know how to search for it.  I would guess Guyana is one of the least collected, but there are others.

I my experience the least collected coins in Europe are from:

- Belgium

- Netherlands

- Luxembourg

I see people selling them for less than 5 bucks per kilogram and I sell the nickel coins from these countries for below melt value because nobody wants them. I even found some rare set coins from Luxembourg but nobody would want to buy them even though they had a mintage of only 10,000.

I don't know how you can directly search for such low-interest coins here on Numista though. I only know that through my personal experience of buying and selling coins.

If you have any further questions, let me know 🙂

pro_bono_publico

I my experience the least collected coins in Europe are from:

 

- Belgium

- Netherlands

- Luxembourg

 

I see people selling them for less than 5 bucks per kilogram and I sell the nickel coins from these countries for below melt value because nobody wants them. I even found some rare set coins from Luxembourg but nobody would want to buy them even though they had a mintage of only 10,000.

 

I don't know how you can directly search for such low-interest coins here on Numista though. I only know that through my personal experience of buying and selling coins.

 

If you have any further questions, let me know 🙂

Interesting, as far as European coins go Belgian/Lux coins are pretty unattractive and poorly struck.

What happens if all countries get rid of coins. those coins will go up faster in price 

Moneytane

Also in the British world, another unloved coin is the 1965 Churchill Crown. Nealry 20 million issued and featuring a very ugly portrait of an ugly and horrible man (Yes he won WW2, but was responsible for Gallipoli and a well known racist). Add to that just one type and was sold at face value in 1965. These coins are so common and worthless, no one wants them.

 

 

Of course a rare type with the designers initials is worth 5 figures, but there are like 10 of them out of nearly 20 million and no doubt ebay scammers screaming with poorly spelled listings like “BAHGAIN, REAR ERA worth 20 biilion ruppees - only USD $9999.99 PLUS $1234.67 Postage and Papackaging, $898.78 shippage and $324 pen wear and hasselage”, and the coin will be a standard one. There is also a satin finish version which is insanely rare, yet some bunny will claim to have one for sale on Ebay.

 

One dealer has been trying to sell 100X Churchills for like $220 for the past year and is wondering why no one is even looking at them, let alone buying them. They are also big hunks of worthless cupronickel, if they had some silver - then there would be some interest. The same dealer is also trying to flog off similar size Dianas, Lizzie and Philly 25th weddings and 1977 silver jubilee crowns and again NO ONE, I read NO ONE is biting.

 

Another unwanted coin is the Benjamin Bunny commemorative 50p from 2017 I think. Unlike other Beatrix Potter themed coins - it was issued in jumbo quantities (20 million - peanuts next to the billion or so commem quarters of the USA each year). Some YT channels even have people tagging the coins and putting them into circulation.

 

And the 1967 UK penny, a mintage of 660 million compared to 159 million in 1966 and less than 100 million every other year, means the coin has little collectibility and as it was the last circulating penny (Just for you pedantic types who will say “What about the 1970 penny” a one off proof set issue that did not generally circulate (I say that as no doubt a few tried to). Apparently bulk lots of old UK pennies, reveal around ⅓ of them of average have 1967 pennies in them and not all are shiny UNC (The coin was minted from 1967 through to mid 1970, yet the date was frozen with 1967 on it).

 

The only good thing about Churchills, Benjamin Bunnies and 1967 Pennies, is that they are usually found UNC and decent sized well made coins much better than say some aluminium rubleniks from some Communist stan or inflation era Hispanic coin.

I have just one burning question about all of this (but which indirectly relates to large mintage issues such as the UK 1967 Penny, Churchill Crown, 1972 QEII Crown, etc.)…

UK Population 1965-70 - approx. 55.5m

UK Population 2024 - approx. 69.1m

World Population 1967 - approx. 3.5b

World Population 2024 - approx. 8.2b

As we gradually move away from using hard cash on a daily basis towards electronic transactions, what is likely to happen to all that scrap metal ?  

Some interesting, but often conflicting points:  

• I know that my children have little or no interest in collecting coins or stamps, or for that matter collecting anything or any sort.  I'm not sure if this is a common view, but when I think back to when I was a child, almost every school had a stamp or coin club.  As a former School Governor of 10 years plus, I don't know of any stamp or coin clubs in any of the schools I've visited here in the county of Kent, UK.
• Younger people also don't like using cash, mainly because they do almost all of their shopping online these days.  If this is a common perspective, we are likely to see fewer and fewer circulation coins, or even banknotes, being minted, despite having more and more people on the planet.
• In just 50 or 100 years, there may be enormous interest in a relatively rare 1967 UK Penny, but from fewer and fewer people interested in collecting an obsolete form of money.

LDC