Article: Why do so many Ottoman coins have holes in them - Explained.

6 posts
Hi All,
I found this article very interesting and thought I should share it. Recently I've come across many holed Ottoman coins during my collecting and I was surprised by the volume of holed coins relative to what you normally see. This article has a good explanation and turns out that these holes actually add to the interest of the coins.

https://ottomanandturkishcoins.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/coins-and-culture-why-do-so-many-ottoman-coins-have-holes-in-them/

Hope you enjoy,
Aaron
I sell my Duplicate or Un-Needed coins on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/str/coinsandmorenj.
Very interesting article. I never actually noticed coming across more Ottoman coins having more holes than any other country, but the part about foreign coins being used as well seems to make up for it.

As always I never buy holed coins; to me personally, a scratch, wear, even corroding are just disfigurements; even a pendant and jewellery mount can be removed with relative ease, but once a hole has been punched through a coin (obviously I mean post-mint!), it can't be fixed or ignored; it will always be glaringly disfigured in that way. I only have one holed coin in my entire collection.

But maybe it is easier for collectors of Ottoman coins who see more such coins more often to ignore their holes, I dunno.
I guess that's a more satisfying answer than the usually offered "belly dancer's costumes" version. In my experience there aren't that many belly dancers and all the ones I've seen were overweight Europeans, except oddly enough, in the US where they're equally overweight Turkish ladies.

There's an equally charming story behind a series of either coins or tokens commonly holed because they were traditionally nailed to the ship's mast for good luck. I'm pretty sure it was in reference to one of the British colonies but my mind remains otherwise blank. I love reading about the backstory / hidden history of coins so I'd very much like to believe there's some truth to it and not just a cynical ploy to gin up the price of otherwise ruined coins. Does anyone else recall this story?

I have a couple of "holeys" with equally interesting stories behind them. Time's a bit short right now, I'm still catching up after a long tour of The Old South* with very limited internet access. Once I get caught up I'll take some pictures and flesh out the story.


* I did find several old timey, mom and pop style coin shops during our travels which yielded an absolute trove of really great coins. Unlike the coin shops in Florida these haven't been picked clean so each day I'd wrap the pickings up in a large knotted handkerchief and put them in the centre console of the faithful Jeep. As a result I've got several lots of mostly old, mainly silver coins which I'll be taking great pleasure in adding to my collection, swap list and junk silver box, in roughly equal quantities.
Non illegitimis carborundum est.  Excellent advice for all coins.
Make Numismatics Great Again!  
I don't think many holed Ottoman coins have been identified as "belly dancer coins" on this site. But there have been many tokens which can be qualified as "belly dancer tokens", though they may have been used for any ornament or woman's dress, not just belly dancers'.

In North America, and possibly more in Canada, there are many copper coins and tokens with a squarish hole in them. In many if not most cases, it's because they were nailed to the top plank of door casings for good luck, especially barn doors in colonial times. So, that matches what Phil says about ships, which I didn't know. (Nails, of course, were usually square.)
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Recently I made a couple of pictures of how coins may be used.

Jeverly made from Soviet coins (found in antique shop in Uzbekistan)


Something from India in the museum in Hanoi:
Medieval sets for swap:https://en.numista.com/forum/topic140941.html

My personal list of scammers from Numista: erniemix, yvain, CassTaylor
Interesting !

I read it few days ago and bought a lot of 30 paras (for about 1,2€ each) just after that. I guess they all came from a single ornament.



I thought there were only 4 different types of coins, but I identified 7 different rulers from the mints of Cairo and Istambul/Constantinople and I still have 6 coins left.

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