According to Canada’s recently-released 2012 federal budget plan, the Royal Canadian Mint will stop making new pennies in 2012. The penny will remain legal tender (in other words you can still spend your pennies), but no more new pennies will be made. This means that pennies will slowly disappear as they are lost, tossed, returned to banks, or added to people’s collections.

The Canadian Ministry of Finance’s reasons for eliminating the penny include:

• It costs the Canadian government 1.6 cents to make each penny, costing Canadian taxpayers around $11 million per year
• The buying power of a penny continues to decline – they are useless on their own, and are only used to make change for cash purchases

Canada will join countries like Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain in removing their lowest-denomination coins. Australia stopped making 1- and 2-cent coins in 1992. New Zealand stopped making 1- and 2-cent coins in 1987, and the 5-cent coin in 2004. Great Britain stopped issuing its half-penny coin in 1984.

Canadian pennies from 1962 through 2005

The Canadian penny, pictured to the right, features a picture of the Queen on the front and a pair of maple leaves on the back. The design remains largely unchanged since 1937, other than changes to who was pictured on the front (starting with King George VI in 1937, then switching to Queen Elizabeth II in 1953) and updated portraits of Queen Elizabeth over the years.

There are similar arguments for getting rid of the penny in the United States. Pennies are expensive to make, can’t buy anything, and are largely unused by the American public. I know many people who simply throw pennies away if they receive them as change. Even so, Americans seem fairly nostalgic about their pennies, and government discussions about getting rid of them have so far gone nowhere. Dollar coins, on the other hand, have never taken off in the United States, despite repeated efforts to introduce them to American circulation.

The loss of any coin from circulation is a blow to world coin collectors everywhere. But that loss is part of what makes world coin collecting interesting – designs change, new coins come into existence, and some coins (and even countries) disappear. The Canadian penny isn’t going to completely disappear any time soon – with more than 9,000,000,000 (yes, 9 billion) pennies minted in the last 10 years, there are still plenty out there to find. But this may be the last year to get a Canadian Proof Set that includes the iconic copper-colored penny.

There are several modern numeral systems used in the world today that use symbols other than 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… (known frequently as Western Arabic or European numerals) that many of us are familiar with. Japanese, Thai, and Arabic are just a few examples of languages that use different symbols to represent numbers.

For a world coin collector, it is helpful to be able to read numbers in these different languages. It lets you figure out the date on a coin, and its quantity or denomination (e.g. 25 cents) which are both important for proper cataloging of your collection.

The Eastern Arabic Numerals


The symbols that Middle Eastern Arabic uses to represent the numbers from 0 to 9 are referred to as Eastern Arabic Numerals. They are shown here with their European equivalent:

Note the “false friends” – numerals that look similar to the European numerals but don’t mean the same thing. ٥ looks like 0, but means 5. ٦ looks like 7 but means 6.

Numbers that are larger than 9 use combinations of these symbols just like we do with the European numerals:

• 10 = ١٠
• 25 = ٢٥
• 713 = ٧١٣

Here are some examples on actual foreign coins:

Left to right: 2, 25, 100

Arabic Dates


Most coins from Arabic or Islamic countries use the Islamic Calendar, which began (Year 1) in 622 A.D. (by the Gregorian calendar we use in the United States). That is why the dates on modern Arabic coins are usually in the 1300s and 1400s – it’s not because the coins are 600-700 years old.

Here are some date examples on actual coins:

Left to right: 1984 and 1404, 1965 and 1385, 1956 and 1375

More recent coins frequently have both the Islamic year and the Gregorian year on them, which makes our understanding of the year it was made a little easier. But the Gregorian year is usually written using Arabic numerals (like the examples above), so you still need to practice your transcription from Arabic to European numbers to be able to read them.

A smiley-face penny

I recently found this in a bag of mixed foreign coins – a US penny with a smiley face (smile) cut into it. Actually it looks more like it is laughing, which I think is a bit unique. The coin is a 1992 D US penny, which means that it is made up mostly of zinc with a thin layer of copper on the outside to give the coin it’s traditional brown color.

Croatia 10, 20, and 50 lipa coins

On January 22, 2012, citizens of Croatia voted to approve their country joining the European Union (Croatia first applied to the EU in 2003). If the membership is ratified by the other 27 EU members, then Croatia will become the 28th European nation to join the Union on July 1, 2012. The last countries to be admitted to the union were Bulgaria and Romania in 2007.

Croatia’s currency today is called the kuna. 1 kuna = 100 lipa. Membership in the European Union usually leads to membership in the Eurozone (the subset of EU countries which also exclusively use the euro as their currency) a few years later, although there are some exceptions (Great Britain and Denmark have special exemptions, for example).

This means that by joining the European Union, Croatia will eventually switch their money (and, more importantly for readers of this blog, their coins) from the kuna to the euro. The last countries  to convert to the euro were Estonia in 2011, and Slovakia in 2009.

Of the current 27 European Union countries, only 17 exclusively use the euro. The other 10 are either exempt or are taking the steps necessary in order to eventually switch. With a stable currency, the switch to the euro can take as little as 2 years. But according to news articles, the current situation with Greece (which is a member of the Eurozone) may cause the Zone to be more cautious about allowing new members and may delay Croatia’s switch to the euro until 2017.

So even though you may be hearing about Croatia joining the EU, don’t expect to see any new Croatian euro coins for quite some time. The next most likely countries to adopt the euro, based on their progress through the conversion prerequisites, appear to be Lithuania and Latvia.

Ancient Chinese “cash” coin

Americans, when asked about coins with holes in them, probably picture the old Chinese “cash” coins which are featured so prominently in Chinese-style decor.  These coins had a square-shaped hole in the center, with Chinese characters around it.  The United States has never had a coin with a hole in it, so it’s not something we’re used to seeing. Plenty of other countries, however, have had one or more of this type of coin (known as “holed coins” or “holey coins”) in their recent history.

As far as I know, the holes put into modern foreign coins don’t serve any specific purpose. They are not there to make the coins work in a particular machine, or to be easier to carry (although they would be slightly lighter than a coin without a hole). The main reason that you would make a modern coin with a hole in it (or, for that matter, with an unusual shape), besides pure decoration, is to make it more easily distinguishable (by touch and sight) from other coins in circulation.

(Putting a hole in a coin would also use less metal, which may be important when metal is needed for other uses (such as during a long war). However, coins are usually made out of the most common and least expensive metals possible (you don’t want to make a $1 coin that uses $2 in metal) so I’m not aware of any examples of a country putting a hole in their coins for this reason.)

Coin from India with a large hole

Most coins that have holes in them have a relatively small hole – usually 1/4 of an inch (6.3 mm) or smaller. The hole is meant to be seen and felt, but not to be worn like a ring (wouldn’t that be interesting?). The one exception I’ve seen is the 1 pice coin from India and Pakistan in the 1940s, which had a 3/8 inch (9.5 mm) hole in a coin that was less than 1 inch (2.5 cm) across. It gives the coin a unique look, like you could almost wear it as a ring.

Coins with holes drilled in to them to make jewelry

On coins that intentionally have holes in them, the hole is always in the direct center of the coin, and usually the design of the coin incorporates the hole (so you don’t have a hole directly in the middle of a person’s head, for example). If you see a coin that has a hole near the edge, or has multiple holes (see pictures), someone has drilled a hole in the coin in order to use it for decoration or jewelry. A single hole near the edge means that the coin may have been worn on a necklace or bracelet. Two holes toward the center of the coin, such as the one pictured, indicates that it may have been used as a button on a piece of clothing. This kind of destruction makes the coin worthless to collectors.

Japan 5-yen (left) and 50-yen (right) coins

I believe that the only country currently using coins with holes is Japan, whose 5 yen and 50 yen coins both have holes in the center. They are also nearly the same size (the 5-yen is bigger), but the 50-yen coin has a reeded edge while the 5-yen has a smooth edge. The 100-yen coin is the same size as the 5-yen, but with a reeded edge; so the hole in the center helps to make the 50-yen more noticably different than the 100-yen.

Besides Japan, many countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East have used coins with holes in the recent past, and you might be surprised by who they are. Spain added a hole to their 25-peseta coin in 1990 and kept it until switching to the euro in 2002. Hungary had a hole in their 2-filler coin, used from 1950 until 1992. Greece had holes in their 5-, 10-, and 20-lepta coins from the 1950s until the 1970s. Fiji had holes in their half-penny and penny in the 1930s through the 1950s.

Here is a list of the countries that I’ve found that have circulated coins with holes since 1900. This is definitely not a complete list, so I will update it when I find out about other countries. And since I bet that you readers know of examples that I haven’t listed, I’m going to turn on blog comments this month – so post any countries that are missing from this list (list specific denominations and years if you can).

Countries which have had a coin with a hole since 1900:

Australia
Belgium
Belgian Congo
British West Africa
Congo
Denmark
East Africa
Egypt
Fiji
Finland
France
French Indochina
Greece
Greenland
Hungary
India
Indonesia
Japan
Laos
Lebanon
Mongolia
Morocco
Nepal
Netherlands
New Guinea
Nigeria
Norway
Pakistan
Palestine
Papua New Guinea
Philippines
Poland
Romania
Spain
Syria
Thailand
Tunisia
Turkey
Vietnam
Yugoslavia
Zambia

Update 12/25/2012: Added Romania, Syria, Tunisia, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia