Here is one of the rarest Polish coins of the World War II period.
It is a 1939 zinc 5 grosz without a hole.
It is one of a series of coins issued by the General Government - an administrative unit created in the areas of the Republic occupied by Nazi Germany. It included territories not incorporated into the Reich, where an Issuing Bank was established responsible for the introduction of banknotes and later coins. The issuance of the latter had features typical of wartime issues. Ready-made stamp designs were used, minting coins with backdated dates, mainly in the cheap metal zinc (withdrawing strategically needed nickel from circulation).
In the case of the 5 penny coins, which were not introduced into circulation until May 1943, in order to save metal, the decision was made to mint them with a hole. According to Jerzy Chalupski,"the savings amounted to about 1.5 tons of zinc," adding, however, that "if the occupation had lasted longer, larger mintages would have yielded correspondingly greater savings."
According to the research of Piotr Kosanowski, who reached the stamps of this issue, these coins were minted on disks with a pre-cut hole.
The present piece is a very rare minting error - the result of being struck on a poorly prepared disc.
Known from individual auction listings.
Absent from our offer since 2015!
