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50 lei 1922 (1928) |
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| 40 mm diameter, 16.13 g, gold 90%, silver 7.5%, copper 2.5%, grained edge legend "FERDINAND I REGELE ROMANILOR - 50 LEI" meaning "FERDINAND I KING OF THE ROMANIANS - 50 LEI" and half profile crowned effigy of the king to the left; next to the right shoulder P. M. DAMMANN, name of the engraver, outer pearl circle |
legend "MARIA REGINA ROMANILOR - 1922 -" meaning "MARIE QUEEN OF THE ROMANIANS - 1922 -" and half profile crowned effigy of the queen to the right, outer pearl circle Mintage: 105.000 coins |
The gold coin pictures above are present on Romanian coins through the kind permission of an anonymous donor.
The coin pictured here belongs to a four coin set of 20, 25, 50 and 100 lei. 20 and 100 lei share common design, the same for 25 and 50. The entire set was engraved by the renowned French artist Paul Marcel Dammann (1885 - 1939). The catalog values of king Ferdinand gold coins indicate that a lot of them were not released. Mr. J. M. suggests that a large part of the mintage was melted, maybe to strike other coins.
The coins were issued to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the coronation of Ferdinand I and Mary as sovereigns of the then entire Great Romania. Through the three Unions of 1918 Romania became again wholly complete. The Romanians had been brought together by Michael the Brave for the first time in 1600, that being the reason for which Romanians called World War I the Nation Recompletion War. The October 1922 coronation took place at Alba Iulia, in the heart of Transylvania, just like it did the first time in 1600 to add deepest signification.
On the 20 and 100 lei coins, Ferdinand wears a laurel wreath, thus marking the victorious conclusion of the Nation Recompletion War.
Queen Marie appears, wearing the same crown, on the 100 lei gold anniversary coin from 2010. Also exists a 10 lei gold coin dedicated to the crown of Queen Marie, issued in 2015 (part of the History of Gold Series).
About the 1922 gold coin set
These pieces were minted in 1928 in Great Britain, at the Royal Mint in London. The coins are inscribed with the year 1922 because they were prepared to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the coronation of Ferdinand I and Marie as king and queen, which had taken place in October 1922 in Alba Iulia; the law for issuing these coins was published in the Official Gazette of Romania on 4th of June 1927, and King Ferdinand died on 20 July of the same year.
The minting of these coins was regulated by Law No. 114, voted by the Assembly of Deputies and by the Senate on the same day, May 24, 1927. The law was promulgated by Royal Decree No. 1712 of June 2, 1927, and was published in the Official Gazette two days later.
Law No. 114 on the minting of gold coins [1]
Art. 1.- The Ministry of Finance concludes with the National Bank of Romania a convention by which authorized it to struck for the commemoration of the coronation of Their Majesties the King and Queen, gold coins of 20, 25, 50 and 100 lei, in a total value of 18,000,000 lei gold, namely:
300.000 pieces of 20 lei 6.000.000 lei gold.
150 000 " " 25 " 3.750.000 " "
105.000 " " 50 " 5.250.000 " "
30.000 " " 100 " 3.000.000 " "
Total lei . . . 18.000.000 lei gold.
Art. 2.-To strike these coins, the National Bank of Romania will use the gold and silver ingots from its treasury in Bucharest.
The minting will be made in << Monetaria Regală din Londra >> (Royal Mint London).
Art. 3.- The coins will have the finenesses, alloys, weights, dimensions and tolerances as below:
Fineness of 900/1000.
The pieces of 100 lei will weigh 32.2580 grams.
" " 50 " " " 16.1290 "
" " 25 " " " 8.0645 "
" " 20 " " " 6.5416 "
The pieces of 100 lei will have diameter of 35 millimeters.
" " 50 " " " " " 40 "
" " 25 " " " " " 30 "
" " 20 " " " " " 21 "
The tolerance for fineness will be 1/1000, and for weight 2/1000.
The 20 and 100 lei coins will be made of gold and copper alloy, while the 25 and 50 lei coins will be made of gold, silver and copper alloy.
Art. 4.- The effigies and inscriptions of the new coins will be as follows:
a) The 20 and 100 lei coins will bear on the obverse the effigy of HM the King, with the inscription "Ferdinand I Regele Românilor" [Ferdinand I King of the Romanians], and on the reverse the country's coat of arms (the middle shield), with the inscription "Romania 20 lei (or 100 lei) 1922".
The 20 lei coins will have serrations on the edge, and the 100 lei ones will bear the inscription "Patria și dreptul meu" [Homeland and my right];
b) The 25 and 50 lei coins will have on the obverse the effigy of HM the King in coronation costume, with the inscription: "Ferdinand I Regele Românilor" [Ferdinand I King of the Romanians] and the value, and on the reverse the effigy of HM the Queen also in coronation costume with the inscription "Maria Regina Românilor" [Marie Queen of the Romanians], and the date 1922.
Both the 25 lei and 50 lei coins will have serrations on the edge.
Art. 5 - The National Bank of Romania is authorized to remove from the country the ingots necessary to mint these coins.
Both the new coins and the remaining available refined ingots will be exempt from any customs duties upon their entry into the country.
Art. 6.- The coins will be minted according to the original designs approved by the Ministry of Finance. After the minting is completed, the original designs will be handed over to the Ministry, and the reproduction dies will be destroyed.
Information provided by the 10 lei coin pamphlet from 2019 - the 50 lei coin with year 1922 [2]
A renowned French artist, Paul Marcel Dammann (1885 - 1939), was hired to design and make the dies. The gold and silver needed to strike the coins arrived at the Royal Mint on August 27, 1927 [2]. The mint also received the dies made by Dammann. These had too high a relief, so that the 25 and 50 lei coins, which had a large diameter and a small mass and therefore a very small thickness, could not be obtained to a satisfactory quality. As proof of this shortcoming, lead essays were sent to Bucharest [2]. With Dammann's explicit agreement, the Royal Mint commissioned one of its own engravers, Percy Metcalfe, to rework the model so that the relief would be shorter.
The new designs were completed in January 1928, and the necessary dies were made in June [2]. The minting of the entire mintage figures was completed at the beginning of July, and in August the coins arrived in Bucharest [2].
Information provided by the annual report of the Royal Mint for 1927 [3]
In the first part of 1927 the Romanian authorities decided to mint several types of gold coins to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Coronation in Alba Iulia. The governor of the National Bank of Romania [in 1927 the governor was Dimitrie Burillianu (1878-1954)] visited the Royal Mint and reached an agreement with the Royal Mint. After this the Romanians resolved the formal, legal part, and Law no. 114 was adopted for the minting of gold coins, which explicitly stipulated that the pieces were to be minted at the Royal Mint in London.
Although king Ferdinand died on July 20, the project to mint commemorative gold coins was not stopped. The precious metal ingots left Bucharest and arrived in London. Here the metal was refined to the fineness required by the law for gold coin issuance.
The 20 and 100 lei coins had the masses corresponding to the 20 and 100 monetary units of the Latin Monetary Union system - 6.4516 g and 32.2580 g respectively, of which 90% was pure gold [in the law the 20 lei piece is given as 6.5416 g instead of 6.4516 g; it quite likely is a writing error in the law; the problem could be clarified by checking the mass of a coin].
The 25 and 50 lei coins corresponded to the 25 and 50 lei coins of 1906. As a type - that is a coin with a large diameter and simultaneously very thin - they were similar to the Austrian 2 and 4 ducats, or to the Venetian or Ottoman sequins [3]. The weights of the 25 and 50 lei coins also observe the Latin Monetary Union standard. The 25 lei coin has exactly a quarter of the weight of the 100 lei coin, and the 50 lei coin - exactly half.
Even before discussing with the Royal Mint, the Romanians had hired a Frenchman, P.M. Dammann, to make the coin models and dies. Dammann's models, however, had such a high relief that the pieces could not be struck. New models, with a low relief, were made in London by Percy Metcalfe (1895-1970). Metcalfe also made some changes in the positioning of the nominal value. When consulted, Dammann declared himself fully satisfied with the quality of the new models.
For the 20 and 100 lei coins, the modifications necessary for the actual minting were made by scaling down the models sent from France.
A quantity of 101.75 ounces of the 90% gold and 10% copper alloy was used for experiments related to the gold coins ordered by Romania [3]. The metallographic testing laboratory carried out several experiments, in order to finally obtain the exact color of the alloy desired by the Romanian authorities [for the 25 and 50 lei coins, of course].
Information provided by the annual report of the Royal Mint for 1928 [4]
The report shows that the modification of the dies received from Paris was carried out "satisfactorily." The "sequins" were to have a color similar to that of the old Turkish coins of the same type, which were still used by the peasants as ornaments [it must be, of course, a reference to the gold coin necklaces worn by women].
In August 1928 the entire order had been delivered. It is also mentioned that the Royal Mint had received a new order for coins from Romania, this time for circulation coins. This is clearly a reference to the 5 lei and 20 lei coins with king Michael as child, which would appear later with the year 1930.
Unexpectedly, the alloy from which the 25 and 50 lei coins were made was declared (in two places in the text) 900‰ gold, 15‰ silver and 85‰ copper [4]. According to [5], the composition is 900‰ gold, 75‰ silver and 25‰ copper. In the monograph "Romanian Coins and Banknotes" - MBR [6], but also in [7] and [8], all four gold coins with the 1922 millesim are declared to have 900‰ gold and 100‰ copper. In the case of the 25 and 50 lei coins, there is clearly an error regarding the copper content, because the color of these coins is, as reflected in the pictures available on the Internet, much lighter than that of the 20 and 100 lei coins. Since only one of the variants can be correct (15‰ or 75‰), we consider that the issue of the composition of the 25 and 50 lei coins remains open until someone has the opportunity to make an experimental determination of the silver content.
To make the Romanian 20 and 100 lei coins, a quantity of 183,512.251 ounces of 90% gold and 10% copper alloy was melted. For the 25 and 50 lei coins, 194,356.986 ounces of 90% gold alloy, as well as silver and copper, were used. The quantities declared as melted at the Royal Mint for the Romanian coins are almost double than the minimum required for minting the coins.
To verify the alloy, 145 coins (comprising pieces of all four denominations) were tested. The average fineness of the gold was obtained as 899.973‰ [4].
Did the gold coins with year 1922 entered circulation?
The reception of the gold coins by the National Bank of Romania was announced in the press of 1928. For example, in issue 100 of September 28, 1928 of the Gazeta Transilvaniei [Transylvania's Gazette] [9] it is written that "For the time being, the new coins will not be put into circulation, so as to avoid - they say - seizing and speculation. Only a limited number will be given to the country's great dignitaries, as well as to collectors, the exchange, in these cases, being made exclusively on the basis of counter-payment also in gold, that is, paying in foreign or Romanian gold coins, from the older series".
It is believable that some pieces were distributed to great dignitaries. As for the method of purchase by the public, namely by paying with gold coins, it would be interesting to find a contemporary testimony of someone who actually made such a purchase. Today, such a method of payment seems very strange to us an unwarranted.
Conclusions
The Royal Mint's annual reports for 1927 and 1928 allow us to clarify some of the unknowns of this series of gold coins. Thus, it is clear that the year of minting is 1928. The information available in the year 2000s came from the book Monetele României [Coins of Romania], written by Octavian Iliescu and Paul Radovici, in which it was assumed that the pieces were minted in 1928-1929 [7].
The Royal Mint reports confirm the assumption that the entire mintage stipulated by the gold coinage law came to completion. Based on the mintage figures written in the law and on the masses, the entire issue of 585,000 pieces had 5806.44 kg, of which 90% was pure gold.
Also, a somewhat "official" value of the composition of the 25 and 50 lei coins became known: 900‰ gold, 15‰ silver and 85‰ copper.
Several important aspects of the history of this coin series remain unknown: when the coins were made available to the public, how many coins of each denomination reached the public, and what happened to the coins remaining at the National Bank (when were they destroyed, and why). Surely, accurate information about the movement of these coins must still reside in the NBR archive.
References
1. * * *, Monitorul Oficial, nr. 120, 4 iunie 1927.
2. Ciornei Cr., Moneda de 50 lei cu milesimul 1922. Direcția Emisiune, Tezaur și Casierie, Imprimeria Băncii Naționale a României, București, 2019.
3. * * *, Fifty-Eighth Annual Report of the Deputy Master and Comptroller of the ROYAL MINT 1927. London. Published by His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1928.
4. * * *, Fifty-Ninth Annual Report of the Deputy Master and Comptroller of the ROYAL MINT 1928. London. Published by His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1929.
5. Schäffer E., Stambuliu B., România. Proiecte, probe monetare și catalogul monedelor emise. Vol. I 1860 - 1989. Galeria numismatică, volum tiparit la Monitorul Oficial R.A., București, 2009.
6. Buzdugan G., Luchian O., Oprescu C., Monede și bancnote românești. Editura Sport-Turism, București, 1977.
7. Iliescu O., Radovici P., Monetele României. 1867-1969. Editura Enciclopedică, București, 2004.
8. Kiritescu C., Sistemul bănesc al leului și precursorii lui. vol. al II-lea. Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, București, 1967.
9. * * *, Monetele românești de aur. Gazeta Transilvaniei, nr. 100, 28.09.1928, Brașov.
Below are presented the pictures of two uniface essays made from bronze, from the G.F. collection, Germany. Both essays have thick rim.
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