Trying to Determine When Foreign Coins Are Obsolete

[Recyclersteve]

Does anyone know of a good site for me to determine whether foreign coins are obsolete or not?

A good test of the site to determine how up-to-date it is could be made this way- British 1 pound coins were heavily counterfeited and finally ceased being legal tender in mid-October. A new coin with several anti-counterfeiting measures replaced the old ones.

It would be nice if there was a single free site that covered this for all countries, rather than using something like Wikipedia which would be very time consuming.

Any ideas?

[hobo finds]

http://worldcoingallery.com/countries/c ... /index.htm lists current world coins, could work backwards from there...

[AGgressive Metal]

Some places like Hong Kong and Singapore are similar to the US in that they honor their older series coins (just like we can still spend IKEs theoretically), but many do not. And many countries switch to a new currency entirely after a bout of inflation. The Nordic countries tend to issue a new series of coins every 20-30 years or so even though the currency itself is not changing, while Switzerland has used the same coin design since the 1800's with the only changes being composition. Rule of thumb is that if its 1990s or earlier and you don't know the country its best to double-check.

[Recyclersteve]

Some places like Hong Kong and Singapore are similar to the US in that they honor their older series coins (just like we can still spend IKEs theoretically), but many do not. And many countries switch to a new currency entirely after a bout of inflation. The Nordic countries tend to issue a new series of coins every 20-30 years or so even though the currency itself is not changing, while Switzerland has used the same coin design since the 1800's with the only changes being composition. Rule of thumb is that if its 1990s or earlier and you don't know the country its best to double-check.

Good stuff- thanks. Didn't know that about the Nordic locales.

[AGgressive Metal]

here are the current Sweden, Norway, & Denmark series