World coins chat: São Tomé & Principe

São Tomé & Principe is an island nation just off the Gabonese coast centered around two island groups after which the country was named. Portuguese explorers discovered the then uninhabited islands around 1470. São Tomé was discovered on St Thomas Day and Principe on St Anthony's Day and thus was named Santo Antão until renamed in 1502 in honour of the Portuguese prince who was entitled to the tax revenues of the island.

The islands used Portuguese currency until the Banco Nacional Ultramarino started issuing banknotes in 1914 and coins in 1929. São Tomé & Principe gained independence in 1975 (one year after the overthrow of the Estado Novo regime in Portugal) together with most Portuguese overseas territories. In 1977 the Escudo was replaced by the Dobra (STD) at Par, which was worth 35 to the USD at that time. Chronic inflation eroded the value of the STD. In 1995 a USD was worth 1420 STD and by 2015 this rate was 21,400, making it one of the least valued currency units in the world.

Coins of São Tomé & Principe are pretty rare. Even the current series of 100 to 2000 Dobras are hard to find unless you pay up relatively much compared to other contemporary coin series. It is even harder finding ST&P Escudo coins, which look a lot like other overseas Portuguese coins.

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/sao_tome-et-principe-1.html

I see some ST&P coins from around 1830 but they look pretty Portuguese or Brazilian to me. How can one see that these are from ST&P?

Quote: jokinenI see some ST&P coins from around 1830 but they look pretty Portuguese or Brazilian to me. How can one see that these are from ST&P?

The value side is quite distinctive; isn't it?

BTW STeP suffers from the small island syndrome; they mint lots of coins completely unrelated to them.

Quote: jokinenI see some ST&P coins from around 1830 but they look pretty Portuguese or Brazilian to me. How can one see that these are from ST&P?

I guess the only way is based on the design as many were minted at Brazil and the used the same obverse.

This country has strong relation with Brazil, I lived in Fortaleza during 2009-2010 and many university students were from Cabo Verde and Sao Tome & Principe. I guess the ones from wealthy families...

You are doing a great job jokinen, I could recommend to add the link of the country to the main post so we can jump directly while reading your summary. https://en.numista.com/catalogue/sao_tome-et-principe-1.html

Quote: erdvilla

Quote: jokinenI see some ST&P coins from around 1830 but they look pretty Portuguese or Brazilian to me. How can one see that these are from ST&P?

The value side is quite distinctive; isn't it?

BTW STeP suffers from the small island syndrome; they mint lots of coins completely unrelated to them.

They only minted one for the King back in 1993... not bad comparing to others...

The situation for Sao Tome and Principe in my collection is dire - I have only one coin from the country and I had to specially seek it out. I paid $10 for it, so this is one of my more expensive countries. However that was probably still a good deal for a coin with a rarity index of 91 - also it fits perfectly in my collection of coins with maps on them.

Quote: JustforFunYou are doing a great job jokinen, I could recommend to add the link of the country to the main post so we can jump directly while reading your summary. https://en.numista.com/catalogue/sao_tome-et-principe-1.html

 This has been a great addition, perhaps we could add this to all the old ones as well, with permission from Jokinen we could edit them all, or Jokinen could go back and edit them.

Feel free to add the links to my posts. I am mostly working with my phone and that's not the quickest for editing. Whole idea of this WCC project was to make it a joint effort.

The New Dobra has replaced the old one at a rate of 1000 to 1. Coins dated 2017 have been put in circulation. I also read that the currency has been pegged to EUR at a rate of 24.5 New Dobra.