MONNAIES FANTAISIES / FANTASY COINS

Welcome,

Fantasy coins have been recently becomming to be very popular, even if it is not something new (Many not official issues have been reported by catalogues since decades, like Avram, Buck island, Sealand, and many others), many issues were coming into the market, as a new trend for some collectores, especially based in Western Europa, Russia and China. Basically, a “fantasy” or “unusual” coin is a coin strunk for collectors, without any legal tender, and from a not existing country, but sometimes we can see some unusual coins from an existing country which allows a mint company to make them on their behalf. This is the case for many issues like Niue, Tuvalu, Burkina Faso, Togo, etc… These countries does not have the knowledge or the tools to make their own coins, so they delegate this job to a well-known mint company to do it.
But main of the unusual coins are really fantaisies and from islands or territories which are not an existing country, such as Cabinda, Kuril islands, Redonda, Amazonia, Indian tribes, Mayas… Sometimes they are used as political propaganda to point out the situation of a part of a country who wants to gain independance, like Saharawi or Cabinda.

Despite fantasy coins are not official coinage, they are interesting, and very nice, and are becomming as a new area for coins collection.