🕰️ Early 20th Century Coins (1900–1913)

The years between 1900 and 1913 were the last era of unchallenged empires, stable currencies, and the widespread belief that progress was a straight line. Gold standards held. Borders were open. The coins that circulated through these years carried portraits of monarchs and symbols of nations that would, within a decade, be at war with each other.

The coins in this collection tend to be heavier, larger, and more ornate than what came after — struck from metals and in quantities that assumed the system producing them would continue indefinitely. Edwardian pennies the size of a half dollar. Imperial pfennigs from a Germany that had not yet learned what it was capable of. Scandinavian öre from a monetary union that treated three kingdoms as interchangeable. Each one circulated through a world that had no reason to believe it was about to end, and the weight of that confidence is in the metal.