CAMEROON 50 centimes 1943 CAMEROUN FRANÇAIS

Description

Cameroun (Cameroon, Kamerun) is a nation in West Africa. Through most of the last two millennia it was a contested territory rather than a power center. Germans colonized the region in 1884. After World War I it was split between France and Great Britain as separate Mandate Territories. The French part became independent in 1960, and the British part joined the new country a year later.

It has been habitual, on the collecting side of numismatics, for “Africa” to exclude the Mediterranean coastal states, which are typically lumped in with the other Arab states in the category “Middle East.” Generally speaking, there was a colonial period and an independent period.

By “Modern World Coins” we mean here, generally, the round, flat, shiny metal objects that people have used for money and still do. “Modern,” though, varies by location. There was some other way they were doing their economies, and then they switched over to “modern coins,” then they went toward paper money, now we’re all going toward digital, a future in which kids look at a coin and say “What’s that?” We’ll say: “We used to use those to buy things.” Kids will ask “How?” The main catalog reference is the Standard Catalog of World Coins, to which the KM numbers refer.