TURKEY 100 kurus gold 1943 Ataturk

Description

There was a tradition of hoarding gold in Turkey since long ago. There was also a tradition of making jewelry out of the gold coins, which tended toward the production of thin, wide flans in the 18th and 19th centuries. Later in the 19th century special coins were made for the jewelry business. They were normal weight but on wider, thinner flans. They were referred to as Monnaies de Luxe. In the Republic period gold coins in the normal denominations were made in “regular” and “de Luxe” versions. The De Luxes were a bit lighter. Mintages for the Republican coins were not large for the most part.

The earliest coins in the world were struck in Asia Minor, in modern Turkish territory. The Turks themselves arrived as nomads staring in the 9th centuriy AD. The Ottomans emerged as a dominant power in the 14th century. The Turkish Empire dissolved after World War I and a republic was established.

“Middle East” is, generally spealing, Morocco east to Afghanistan, Sudan in the south to Turkey in the north.

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.