Sunday, December 19, 2010

5 Cents and 6 Pence - CC 317

CC 317
Rhodesian Coin
Origin: Rhodesia (Zimbabwe)
Unit: 6 pence or 5 cents
Details: country no longer exists

I currently don't have the bulk of my coin collection on me, but I still have a few coins and bills lying around in museum storage, so I don't have a wide selection of interesting coins to choose from. However, I did find this rather interesting copper-nickel 1964 coin. What's so interesting is that not only does the country no longer exist but when it did exist it was an unrecognized state. A few Coin Collection posts ago I had a 'Toko' bird coin from Botswana, which lies right next to Zimbabwe on the Southern tip of Africa. From 1965 to 1979 this region was known as Rhodesia, named after the famous Cecil Rhodes, whose namesake is also used for the acclaimed Rhodes Scholarship. Rhodesia was subsequently reverted back to British Colonial rule for a short period of time, then known as Zimbabwe Rhodesia or Southern Rhodesia. However in April of 1980 it was formally recognized as its own country now known as Zimbabwe.

Another odd feature of the coin is that on the obverse there is inscribed 6D and 5C to describe its monetary value. This stands for both 6 Pence and 5 cents respectively. During the time that this coin was made, 1964, Rhodesia was using the Rhodesian Pound-very similar to the British pound. Then in 1970 they finally decimalized and converted to the Rhodesian Dollar. So I'm going to take the fact that they were starting to try and slowly transition to the new currency. When they did eventually switch 1 dollar equaled 2 pounds. Here is some more information on the Rhodesian 6 Pence/5 Cents coin.

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