SAN MARINO 9-piece mint set 2005

Description

Antonio Onofri was offered an expansion of San Marinese territory by Napoleon, which he refused. He signed deals with the Napoleonic Italian states, then made friends with the restored heads of Europe after Napoleon’s fall. He is considered the Father of the Republic.

San Marino was founded by a now sainted stonemason in 301 AD, making it the oldest government in the world. When all of the other little governments joined together to make Italy, San Marino made a side deal. Interestingly, it issued no coins until modern times.

The big player in East Asia is China, of course. Then there is Japan and Korea, throw in Mongolia. South of China and east of India, but not including, for the most part, the islands to the east, is what we call Southeast Asia. From Burma to Malaya there have been a series of local kingdoms for about 2000 years. Russia, with its Asian Siberia, doesn’t count. We consider it part of Europe.

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.