Catalog
3 Pence Sammy Marks Tickey, Gold Pattern
| Issuer | South African Republic (Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek) |
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| Year | 1898 |
| Type | Coin pattern |
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| Obverse description | Bust of Paul Kruger (1825–1904), President of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek from 1883 to 1902, facing left, depicted in his characteristic attire with top hat and coat. Kruger was the foremost Boer political and military figure during the period of conflict with British imperial expansion in southern Africa. The effigy is rendered in a plain field typical of the pattern coinage associated with Sammy Marks, the industrialist and entrepreneur who commissioned this experimental striking. |
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| Obverse script | Latin |
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| Additional information |
Sammy Marks — Lithuanian-born entrepreneur, brandy distiller, and personal friend of Paul Kruger — proposed minting a threepenny piece at his Hatherley Distillery outside Pretoria, making it the only privately facilitated coinage pattern in ZAR history. The arrangement was commercially motivated: Marks wanted small-denomination coins to ease wage payments to his workers. The Pretoria Mint struck a handful of gold examples as presentation or proof-of-concept pieces.
The bronze circulation version was eventually approved in limited quantities, but the gold pattern never progressed beyond a tiny handful of known survivors. The Anglo-Boer War intervened within a year.