NETHERLANDS INDIES 2 1/2 gulden 1943 D

Description

After the disruption of the Napoleonic wars the Indonesian islands were given back to the Dutch, who proceeded to administer as a government operation, rather than the forner licensed private business venture of the United East India Company (VOC).

The 10,000 islands of Indonesia are home to people speaking more than 700 languages. Bureaucratic governments are known from about 2000 years ago. Coins were struck at least1000 years ago.

Coin collectors tend to be geographically oriented. If they are not patriotically collecting the coins of only their own country, or sentimentally some other country, then perhaps they will collect a region. The Pacific islands that start with Borneo and progress eastward to Hawaii and Easter Island are culturally very varied and spread across an expanse of water three times the size of Asia. Size of these islands ranges from Australia to Nauru. Population of Indonesia 1/4 billion, Tonga100,000. Coins were made in Indonesia1000 years ago if not earlier.

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.