Just Started a WW II Europe Type Collection

A few weeks ago I started a type collection for coins that were issued and circulated in European countries during the years that they were involved in WW II. This includes the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom.

I don't know why I haven't done this sooner. I have been Interested in the history of WW II from a young age and have read literally hundreds of books about it. I also have watched every documentary that was available to me on TV.

I had a good start to my collection with about 30 coins of different types that I had in a box and had never registered or put in flips. I got these as a teenager over 60 years ago from relatives and friends that served in the military in Europe during WW II.

I am using this numisdoc https://en.numista.com/numisdoc/world-war-ii-occupation-and-emergency-coinages-of-europe-124.html as a general guide as to which countries, and date ranges I am collecting. I then search numista for the countries and date ranges to come up with the types I need to collect.

I would appreciate input from any numista members who also have WW II collections. I would be grateful for any hints, tips, criteria, experiences, you can share about you collection.

Yes, that's a very interesting and popular collection idea.

I would argue, too, that it's among the most interesting types of modern collections because modern republican coinages are generally unrelated to current history and, well, generally boring (which means stability, so a good thing). Republican coinages mostly are about a fictional female figure representing Liberty ─ decade after decade.

As I said in another thread, compare US coinage 1792-1892 to French coinage 1780-1880 and tell me which one is saying more about the current historical events in the issuing country...

One could expand his/her collection to the Americas at little extra cost. Especially interesting, as you probably already know, is that the Belgian 1944 2 francs was struck on US steel-cent planchets.

I realize just now (following your link) that Greece issued no coins during the war, but war-time inflation paper money can be obtained at cheap prices. (I got many from a Greek eBay seller.)

One of the most interesting countries is of course Germany. Here, stamps (which is a form of payment for a service) are perhaps even more interesting that coins and paper money. It's easier to print new propaganda all the time on low-security artefacts such as stamps than on coins and paper money. By the way, one of Hitler's main sources of revenue was the use of his portrait on stamps:



So, whichever way you take your collection in coming months and years, let us know!