Wavy-Edged Coins

A scallop-edged coin from the Bahamas

Despite what we are used to here in the United States, coins do not have to be round to be minted and spent.

I've previously discussed square coins, but an even more common shape is the scalloped coin, which has a wavy edge that goes all the way around the coin. The name comes from the distinctive wavy shell of the scallop, a sea mollusk similar to a clam. This coin shape may also be referred to as wavy-edged, flower shaped, or sun shaped.

Coins with 8 (left), 10 (center), and 12 (right) peaks

Scalloped coins usually have an even number of peaks or points, most commonly 8, 10, or 12.  The peaks are the waves that point away from the coin, like the petals on a flower.  The waves that point back into the coin are called troughs.

Trough aligned (left) vs
peak aligned (right)

Scalloped coins can either be peak-aligned (so that holding the coin right-side up leaves a peak pointing straight down), or trough-aligned (a trough is in the direct center at the bottom edge of the coin).




Because of their unique shape, scalloped coins (along with square coins) are easy to spot in a big mix of coins. They are more decorative than square coins due to the larger number of points on their edge.

Like coins that have holes in them, the main reason behind using a scalloped edge on a coin is to make it more easily distinguishable from other coins. In a pocket, or in the dark, you can easily feel the wavy edge and (for people who use those coins regularly) tell which coin is which. This is also helpful for people who have trouble seeing, and is one of a great many ways that countries have tried to make their coins identifiable by touch alone.

Many countries have used scalloped coins in the last 100 years - more than have used square coins. If you compare this list to the list of countries that have used square coins, you'll see a lot of the same names. As usual, if you find any countries missing from this list, please post it in a comment.

Countries which have had scallop-edged coins since 1900:

Bahamas
Bangladesh
Belize
Bhutan
Botswana
British Honduras
Ceylon (Sri Lanka)
Cook Islands
Cyprus
East Caribbean States
Egypt
Ghana
Guernsey
Hong Kong
India
Iraq
Israel
Jamaica
Libya
Maldives
Malta
Mauritius
Myanmar
Oman
Pakistan
Paraguay
Philippines
Rwanda
Seychelles
Singapore
Sri Lanka (Ceylon)
Sudan
Swaziland
Tanzania
Tibet
Turkey
Vietnam
Yemen

Canada Penny Getting Retired

According to Canada's recently-released 2012 federal budget plan, the Royal Canadian Mint will stop making new pennies in 2012. The penny will remain legal tender (in other words you can still spend your pennies), but no more new pennies will be made. This means that pennies will slowly disappear as they are lost, tossed, returned to banks, or added to people's collections.

The Canadian Ministry of Finance's reasons for eliminating the penny include:

• It costs the Canadian government 1.6 cents to make each penny, costing Canadian taxpayers around $11 million per year
• The buying power of a penny continues to decline - they are useless on their own, and are only used to make change for cash purchases

Canada will join countries like Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain in removing their lowest-denomination coins. Australia stopped making 1- and 2-cent coins in 1992. New Zealand stopped making 1- and 2-cent coins in 1987, and the 5-cent coin in 2004. Great Britain stopped issuing its half-penny coin in 1984.

Canadian pennies from 1962 through 2005

The Canadian penny, pictured to the right, features a picture of the Queen on the front and a pair of maple leaves on the back. The design remains largely unchanged since 1937, other than changes to who was pictured on the front (starting with King George VI in 1937, then switching to Queen Elizabeth II in 1953) and updated portraits of Queen Elizabeth over the years.

There are similar arguments for getting rid of the penny in the United States. Pennies are expensive to make, can't buy anything, and are largely unused by the American public. I know many people who simply throw pennies away if they receive them as change. Even so, Americans seem fairly nostalgic about their pennies, and government discussions about getting rid of them have so far gone nowhere. Dollar coins, on the other hand, have never taken off in the United States, despite repeated efforts to introduce them to American circulation.

The loss of any coin from circulation is a blow to world coin collectors everywhere. But that loss is part of what makes world coin collecting interesting - designs change, new coins come into existence, and some coins (and even countries) disappear. The Canadian penny isn't going to completely disappear any time soon - with more than 9,000,000,000 (yes, 9 billion) pennies minted in the last 10 years, there are still plenty out there to find. But this may be the last year to get a Canadian Proof Set that includes the iconic copper-colored penny.

Reading Arabic Numbers and Dates

There are several modern numeral systems used in the world today that use symbols other than 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... (known frequently as Western Arabic or European numerals) that many of us are familiar with. Japanese, Thai, and Arabic are just a few examples of languages that use different symbols to represent numbers.

For a world coin collector, it is helpful to be able to read numbers in these different languages. It lets you figure out the date on a coin, and its quantity or denomination (e.g. 25 cents) which are both important for proper cataloging of your collection.

The Eastern Arabic Numerals


The symbols that Middle Eastern Arabic uses to represent the numbers from 0 to 9 are referred to as Eastern Arabic Numerals. They are shown here with their European equivalent:

Note the "false friends" - numerals that look similar to the European numerals but don't mean the same thing. ٥ looks like 0, but means 5. ٦ looks like 7 but means 6.

Numbers that are larger than 9 use combinations of these symbols just like we do with the European numerals:

• 10 = ١٠
• 25 = ٢٥
• 713 = ٧١٣

Here are some examples on actual foreign coins:

Left to right: 2, 25, 100

Arabic Dates


Most coins from Arabic or Islamic countries use the Islamic Calendar, which began (Year 1) in 622 A.D. (by the Gregorian calendar we use in the United States). That is why the dates on modern Arabic coins are usually in the 1300s and 1400s - it's not because the coins are 600-700 years old.

Here are some date examples on actual coins:

Left to right: 1984 and 1404, 1965 and 1385, 1956 and 1375

More recent coins frequently have both the Islamic year and the Gregorian year on them, which makes our understanding of the year it was made a little easier. But the Gregorian year is usually written using Arabic numerals (like the examples above), so you still need to practice your transcription from Arabic to European numbers to be able to read them.

Smiley-Face Penny

A smiley-face penny

I recently found this in a bag of mixed foreign coins - a US penny with a smiley face (smile) cut into it. Actually it looks more like it is laughing, which I think is a bit unique. The coin is a 1992 D US penny, which means that it is made up mostly of zinc with a thin layer of copper on the outside to give the coin it's traditional brown color.

The face was probably cut out of the penny using a process called die cutting - a die (a shaped blade or punch) is pressed by a machine into some material (in this case, the zinc of a modern penny) to cut it into a shape (in this case, to cut out 2 eyes and a mouth). A plain round hole can be made in a coin using a drill, but shaped holes like these would be difficult to do, and to do consistently. 

Coins like these are frequently sold in souvenir or gift shops as "Lucky Pennies" - to buy as a gift for someone so that they will have good luck while they are carrying the coin. This is a variation on the rhyme "see a penny, pick it up, all the day you'll have good luck" - the idea that finding a penny is considered good luck. The face certainly makes the penny look more interesting than one that you might find on the ground, but I'm not aware of any studies to determine which type of penny will bring you more luck.

In my previous post about world coins with holes, I mentioned that coins with holes drilled into them are worthless as collectibles. While a shaped hole like this makes the coin not valuable to a coin collector, there are people who specifically collect coins that have been die-cut in this manner (similar to how other collectors seek elongated or "smashed" pennies). Anyone with a drill can cut a round hole in a coin - they are not hard to make, so it would be very unusual to find someone interested in collecting coins with drilled holes. But die-cut coins require expensive tools; they are more rare and so some people do collect them.

Because pennies are considered mostly valueless in the United States (many simply get thrown away every year), you would probably find that most stores or banks would take an occasional penny like this as payment, and then simply throw it away (or keep it as a novelty item). But "Lucky Pennies" usually cost much more than $0.01 to buy at a gift shop, so there is not much value in buying them and then trying to use them as money.

Cutting holes in a United States coin like this may technically be illegal under US law (US Code Title 18, Section 331). But in practice, the law is usually enforced only when coins are changed for fraudulent use - such as cutting a penny down to the size of a dime (to use in vending machines), or painting a quarter gold so that can be passed off as a US dollar coin.

Even though it's not really what I collect, I'm going to keep this little guy because it makes me smile.