/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>55094683
I think I was that anon from last year's thread on with the Africa story.
New story is though that they just melt it for jewellery because they trust it to be 90% silver.

I went today and they even sold me the 19th century 5 franc piece at 10% over spot.
Downside with this piece is that on average 1-2% of the coin is gone through wear and tear.
But still the history is so cool.

It got minted from 1795 till 1878 and only got demonetized in 1928.
133 years of money being silver and 103 years of minting the same coin with the same face value. 1 franc was 4.5 grams of silver.
In the period 1900-1920ish they didnt mint 5 franc coins but 2 franc coins instead, which had the same face value for coin weight but we're only .835 silver instead of .900, so already there was a 7.22% inflationary start of the slippery slope.

After that the franc rapidly deteriorated in value and by 1958 the franc got reset where 1 new franc was 100 old francs.
De Gaulle who was in favour of a strong franc, re-introduced the same coin with the same emblem as the coin struck in the 1870's but now with 10 new francs instead of 5 old francs as face value.
10 new francs, using the conversion was 1000 old francs.
So 200-to-1 devaluation had happened between the demonetization in 1928 (although they probably left circulation earlier) and the restart in the 1960's.

But due to the bull market of silver in the 70's, they ceased minting the 10 franc, and started minting the 50 franc, which was only 20% larger but had 5 times the face value.
Thus by now, an 833-to-1 devaluation had happened.

But even this coin they ceased minting due to the bull market and in the 1980's france minted its final batch of silver coinage being the 100 franc coin, half the size of the 50 franc coin a decade prior.
Thus a 3333-to-1 devaluation in 100 years.
RIP

Silver is king.