Hello All, I just bought a Hutt River Coin. My dealer told me that they are rare and they come from Australia. I read briefly that the Hutt River folks tried to sepearte themselves from the rest of Australia. I liked how it looked so I bought it. Does anyone know if this is collectable or it's potential worth? Thank you, Mapleleaf.
LOL it is rather nice :hail: Hutt river is a small place in the outback of Oz were the local family have decided to create there own kingdom They have produced quite a few coins and I believe stamps over the years and they are collected mainly by those who like fantasy countries Just in case you have not found this site yet LOL http://www.principality-hutt-river.com/
Does a bear ____in the woods? Of course it's collectible and what's more you like it so what's not to collect?
I have some Hutt River notes and stamps. Hutt River Principality publicizes every time one of them meets with a representative from another government, such as Taiwan, whose own nationhood is increasingly problematic. HRP followed some protocols and they recognize Queen Elizabeth II of England as their liege lord. When they travel, they make a point of presenting HRP passports. Sometimes, customs officials stamp them. As for rarity and value, however... Consider the Bank of Upper Canada tokens. They have a fraction the mintage of US Large Cents of the same period and they are much nicer, struck by the Heaton Mint in the UK, whcih was far ahead of Philadelphia. BUCs are nearly medallic, they are so nice. But they never fetch much at market. Another example would be the coins of Tibet. They have relatively low mintages, but, again, "no one" (few) collect them, so they are priced at a fraction of equivalent US coins. In terms of ancients, there is an active effort to catalogue previously unlisted Roman coins. My own interest in ancients is archaic Greek. It's pretty easy to acquire a museum piece, nominally unique, but, again, with a pricetag that is embarrassing. Dealer Frank Robinson wrote a book, Confessions of a Numismatic Fanatiic. He says that when he was a kid, the Brasher Doubloons were all the rage, but he would say that these are common compared to the many unique coins he owned -- he collected Chinese cash. If I may... Our publicly-financed educational system has traditionally met competition only from the Catholic schools. Neither is ideologically positioned to teach capitalism. We easily think that SUPPLY defines price, but that is not true. DEMAND drives the markets. Supply is important, of course, but only relative to demand. So, even here in numismatics, where we buy and sell money for fun, we have to step back and re-think what should be axiomatic. All of that is to say, if you want to increase the value, then increase the demand. Write an article about HRP and your coin. All 1804 Dollars are fakes, but someone wrote a book and now they are the "King of Coins." Go figure...
Their most desirable coins are the early issue ones. The modern ones are more or less made for direct marketing campaigns and have not seen the value of these go much more than melt on ebay. This might be rare with low mintage but as someone pointed out there are not many collectors and so value would be near melt.
yeah, if you have one of the early issues (not the thousands of commems they issued ad naseum) then the coin has more numismatic value. One like this with the prince himself on it: they arent worth that much either to tell the truth Here is a little history: http://www.cachecoins.org/huttriver.htm
Thanks guys for all of the great info. I kind of suspected it would be worth around melt. It also makes sense that supply is only one side of the equation. I do enjoy it none the less.
What happened was Prince Leonard entered into a deal with a shady character,Kevin Gale, forsook his son and made that man Prince Regent, second only to Leonard and had was given license to market the province. Gale took the concept and ran starting a direct marketing venture to sell a huge numbers of commemorative coinage issues, stamps, citizenships, and titles among other Hutt River merchandise. The business relationship eventually soured between the two princes. Upon his death in 1995, Kevin was posthumously charged with treason when it was alleged that he had withheld most of the business profits, enriching himself while reportedly plotting to take over the principality. The 15 year business partnership ended with each side claiming to have been wronged. Leonard claiming to have been betrayed while supporters of Kevin claiming defamation and misrepresentation of the facts. Prince Leonard learned a lesson about trusting shady characters...
