GERMANY SAARLAND 50 franken 1954

Description

Saarland was created as an administrative entity occupied by France as a League of Nations mandate. A referendum in 1935 returned the region to Germany. It was reorganized as a protectorate after World War II. In another referendum in 1955 it’s people voted to join West Germany. It is currently a state, the smallest in area, of the Federal Republic.

The political arrangements that resulted in the nations of modern Europe began to emerge out of local autonomy starting in the 7th century AD or so. Europe, for our purposes, stretches from Greenland to somewhere in Russia. Collectors of Europe would likely include Russia. Collectors of Asia, even though about 2/3 of Russia is in Asia, probably not.

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.