Collecting Syrian coins as an historical and financial investment

3 posts
I've been thinking about this a bit recently. With the turmoil over in Syria at the moment, we've seen that ISIS seem to be embarking on a campaign to wipe out their country's history and heritage. I would think that if they come across any private or dealers collections, they wouldn't hesitate to smelt the coins down for their metals, and I wonder how many coins have already met this fate (where else would they be getting the gold and silver to mint their own coins if they're not melting down coins, jewellery and other artifacts)

Now I only have a handful of Syrian coins and it's not an area that I actively collect. However, I've been thinking that it might be an idea to start collecting Syrian coins. Because it would be doing my bit to preserve a little piece of the Syrian history. An added bonus is that if there ARE coins being smelted down then any remaining are bound to increase in value.

What are your thoughts on the matter?
Quote: "neilithic"​I've been thinking about this a bit recently. With the turmoil over in Syria at the moment, we've seen that ISIS seem to be embarking on a campaign to wipe out their country's history and heritage. I would think that if they come across any private or dealers collections, they wouldn't hesitate to smelt the coins down for their metals, and I wonder how many coins have already met this fate (where else would they be getting the gold and silver to mint their own coins if they're not melting down coins, jewellery and other artifacts)

​Now I only have a handful of Syrian coins and it's not an area that I actively collect. However, I've been thinking that it might be an idea to start collecting Syrian coins. Because it would be doing my bit to preserve a little piece of the Syrian history. An added bonus is that if there ARE coins being smelted down then any remaining are bound to increase in value.

​What are your thoughts on the matter?
​This is one of the countries I actively collect (3 Sets / Collections) as my wife heritage is also from Syria... your thoughts are right.

Every time I see some Silver coin from Syria at the right price I will go ahead and purchase or obtain via swap, etc.

But I will think that the majority of the good coins are already out of syria, I would not be surprised if those coins are already in pawn shops about to be melt in east europe as that's the first stage of many refugees getting out of the war zone.

As you might be aware there are thieves all the way to their final destination (Germany / UK, etc) so I believe they don't carry too much cash with them to avoid such lost. this is similar to the migrants from central america going all the way up to USA... several towns controlled by the Maras!
JustforFun...
With so many millions of Syrian coins minted and especially the older colonial ones being so widely available in Europe and elsewhere, I think this line of thought is a non-starter

the few instances instances I can think of in which coins became scarce were caused by the sudden change over from silver to base metal in the 40s, coins melted to fund the war effort to make munitions and possibly the cultural revolution in china

I've not seen anything so far on that scale in Syria, and if anything , ISIS's position on the ground is even less tenable these days to make a concerted effort to melt down a significant portion of that countries "monetary" history. ... destroying historical monuments and edifices; that's another story of course

that said, no harm in building up your Syrian collection.
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