GREECE 5 drachmai 1875 A Paris mint

Description

At the time this coin was issued, Greece was a member of the Latin Monetary Union. The drachma was equivalent to the French franc.

Otto was forced out by a military coup in 1862. There were no children. The search began for another junior royal to take the throne. They found George, a Danish Prince. George converted to the Greek Orthodox Church. The British liked the choice of monarch and as a goodwill gesture ceded the Ionian Islands to Greece.

Modern Greece emerged from the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century. Seeking protection from Europe they looked around for a well connected yet weak European royal for patronage and alliances. They picked a Bavarian prince. The monarchs were mediocre, and have been thrown out by republican revolutions twice in the the 20th century.

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.