MONACO 100 francs 1950

Description

There was a Greek colony on the site in ancient times. It was granted to Genoa by the Holy Roman Emperor in 1191. It was forcibly siezed by the Grimaldi family in 1297, starting a war that lasted about a century. Genoa lost it to Aragon at the end of the 14th century. Aragon sold it back to the Grimaldis, who have held it since. They signed on as vassals of France, with the title of Duke. On an official document he sent to the French King the Duke styled himself “Prince,” and that document being accepted, he and his heirs were thenceforward Princes.

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.