By Ashraf Abdul-Wahab.
Tripoli, 6 December 2013:
A new quarter-dinar coin is soon to be in people’s pockets replacing the current ten-sided brass-nickel . . .[restrict]version with the name “Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” and a Libyan horseman on it, first issued in September 2003.
The Central Bank of Libya has announced that it will be introducing a circular coin, 29 millimetres in diameter (one millimetre more than the old coin), and golden yellow in colour.
The obverse bears a quarter of a dinar sign, the name of the bank rather than the country, the date of minting and decorative elements. The reverse shows a palm tree with olive branches at its base plus a security tag with an image that changes from showing ¼ to a crescent and star when tilted to the side. It also has the name of the bank in English and 17 stars?.
The new coin is the first of what will be a complete change of coinage, first disclosed exactly a year ago.
The outgoing coin looks set, though, to become a money spinner in collectors’ hands. There are bids of $5.50 at online coin auctions for 2009 quarter dinar pieces – over twenty times its face value. That is nothing, however, compared 2003 when the coin first appeared on eBay. Bidding stopped at $93.17.
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