A lion against mountains on an East African coin

Obverse

We have looked at East Africa previously, so I won’t cover too much of the history this time. This coin is slightly earlier than the last one I covered, and was issued under King George V.

Prior to 1920, East Africa used the “Rupee”. This was because of the significant trade links the region had with British Africa. The currency was decimal with 100 Cents in a Rupee. In 1921, when the value of the silver Rupee had increased, the British government revaluated the currency and created a new currency, now 100 Cents to the East African Shilling. The new shilling was pegged to the Sterling (British) shilling, and were valued at 2:1 for the old coins. There is an interesting transcript of a conversation in British Parliament from the time available. Technically there was a “pound”, however this was a “superunit” with no banknotes created. The pound was used for government accounting of large sums.

Today’s coin is a 50 cent coin or half a shilling. The design is essentially the same as the shilling, only smaller. The obverse features the bust of King George V facing left, with the legend around reading “GEORGIVS V REX ET IND:IMP:” which essentially translates from Latin as “George the fifth, King and Emperor of India”.

The coin is made of “Billon“, which we’ve seen in several other coins. It’s an interesting metal. Merriam-Webster describe billon as: “an alloy of silver containing more than 50 percent of copper by weight”, which certainly appears to fit this coin. Numista list it as .250 silver. It doesn’t note what the other three quarters of the coin’s metal is, although the colour definitely leans towards copper. Although worth much less than pure silver, it does give the coin an interesting colouring. Jumping ahead to the reverse, I love the way the lion on the reverse looks almost gold and the mountains behind look almost blue.

Reverse

The reverse contains the country name at the top, value and year below, and a lion, walking right, in front of mountains in the middle. There is one small population of “Asiatic lions” which live in a national park in western India. All other wild lions are native to Africa, and exist through much of the continent, south of the Sahara desert. Wild lions in the west and central Africa are more closely related to these Asiatic lions in India than to those found in southern and east Africa. Lions appear on many African coins and are a beautiful animal on coins. The majority of East African coins feature tusks, as the 5 cents featured previously. Most of the rest feature a similar image to this of a lion, on its own or in front of mountains. Numista lists 43 coins for East Africa.

The other interesting thing I find about this coin is the denomination, or rather, that it is written three times in that one section of the obverse:

• 50 (Centre, above the date)
• Fifty Cents (left of the date)
• Half Shilling (right of the date)

There are many coins which list the value both numerically and in words, but fewer which explain it as a fraction of the larger unit. What other coins can you think of which do that? What is your favourite? Let us know!