Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
1 Ghirsh / Piastre WW2 War Coinage, Pattern
| Issuer | Syria |
|---|---|
| Year | 1940 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 1 Piastre (0.01 SYP) |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | Log in to see details |
| Diameter | Log in to see details |
| Thickness | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Technique | Log in to see details |
| Orientation | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Annular coin with a central circular perforation. The French state name SYRIE arcs across the upper field in bold raised Latin letters, flanked on the left by the date 19 and on the right by 40 C, with the Arabic equivalent سورية rendered in raised script along the lower arc. The design is minimal and utilitarian, consistent with wartime emergency coinage practice, with all legends arranged to follow the coin's circular form around the central hole. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse script | Arabic, Latin |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Edge | Log in to see details |
| Mint | Log in to see details |
| Mintage | Log in to see details |
| Additional information |
Syria in 1940 was under French Mandate administration, and the outbreak of war severely disrupted metal supplies and minting logistics. This piece is a pattern — a trial strike never approved for circulation — produced as France scrambled to adapt its colonial coinage programs to wartime material constraints. Aluminium bronze was being tested across multiple Mandate territories as a substitute for the nickel and copper alloys that war production had claimed.
No regular-issue 1940 ghirsh in this composition entered circulation. The pattern status makes surviving examples essentially administrative artifacts of a colonial monetary system that would collapse entirely with the fall of France later that same year.