Another pretty sweet Ottoman rarity!!

I'm pretty new to the Journal thing, but since I got some nice feedback for the last one, I thought I'd share another coin.

This time, it's a 1336 yr 2 silver 5 Kurush. The western date on this coin is 1919, and it has an interesting story as well. Like many other nations, the Ottoman Empire issued huge amounts of coinage in the first years of it's participation in World War I ( aside from 1915 dated 5 and 20 Paras, of course!). Those huge mintages in 1914, 1915 and 1916 led to a serious decline in the need for new coinage in 1917, 1918 and 1919, especially since the Ottoman Empire lost huge amounts of territory, and thusly users of Ottoman coinage. This led to most of the coinage of the last Sultan, Mehmed VI, who reigned from July 1918 to November of 1922, being very scarce to rare today....and this one is one of the rarest!! The 1336 yr 2 5 Kurush had an extremely small mintage of 2,000 coins, and very few of those still exist today. Adding to the significance of this coin, 1919 was the final year that the Ottoman Empire minted silver coinage. My coin is an MS 62, and as far as I know it's the only one NGC has ever graded. There's a 5 Kurush Competitive set in the works. Since it's not live yet, I have no idea what this little baby will score......but I'm thinking it might another one pointer, in a good way

Thanks again everyone for the great response to my first Journal, and making this community the amazing place it is!!!

'Til next time!

~Tom

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