Most people would be hard-pressed to find Kurdistan or Minerva on a map. Rand McNally doesn't show them. Internet map sites like Google and Yahoo don't, either. Perhaps even the winner of the National Geographic Bee would be stumped on these two.
That's because these nations and similar places, which have issued what their alleged rulers call coins, paper money and tokens, don't exist or remain unrecognized by most major or even minor powers. As many hobbyists have found, collecting numismatic items from unrecognized states provides a unique but rewarding challenge, an education on geography and history, and close interaction with people having a rebellious or libertarian streak.
With names like the Empire of Atlantium, the Kingdom of Bermania, the Principality of Freedonia, the Hutt River Province and the Principality of Sealand, the list of unrecognized states reads like it came straight from a Three Stooges short. "Or the Marx Brothers," said Joel Anderson, of Joel Anderson Interesting World Coins, referring to 1933's Duck Soup, which has Groucho as the leader of Freedonia.
The names, and the supposed coins, are as different as their creators, many of whom created states as a reaction to laws they disagreed with.
Defining the term
Several types of unrecognized states exist, according to the Unrecognized States Numismatic Society, a group dedicated to collecting numismatic items from such places.
The USNS parts the list of unrecognized states into these divisions: alternative currencies, exile governments and royal houses, fantasies of film and television, literary fantasies, fantasies of video and role playing games, fantasies of private creations, local and communal currencies, micro nations, political secession and autonomy groups, rebel governments, Royal pretenders and miscellaneous.
Available through the "Coin Library" at its Web site, www.usns.info, the list includes "unrecognized entities that are known or reputed to have minted coins or printed bank notes."
To collect these items, you're going to have to throw away the conventional meaning of a few words. While people can and do disagree, coins generally must have been issued by a government authority, and most of these places (for the lack of a better term) are not recognized as having any authority, though courts have sided with some rulers on specific cases. In this article, the terms "coin" or "paper money," no matter what the issuers claim, should be considered a reference to a fantasy issue by a fantasy nation, and not something recognized as legal tender.
The true status or definition of just what these places are could be debated. Many unrecognized states have produced passports, stamps and currency and conferred titles and awards, all of which most outsiders have simply ignored.
Many unrecognized states, like fantasies of private creation, have no physical base. This includes Bermania and Purple Shaftiueland. Some places, including Avram, are physically located in nations and have claimed sovereignty, which has been ignored by the larger entity. While many of these states have a World Wide Web presence, some exist only on the Internet.
Other places, like Sealand, have an actual physical base in areas found to be outside any national jurisdiction.
The most prevalent are what the USNS categorizes as "micro nations." Certain characteristics bind micro nations together, sovereign or not. These places are often small, geographically and in population, with few active participants. Desire to have sovereignty recognized separates micro nations from those in the other categories.
A great distillation of the various types of unrecognized states, like vehicles to promote an agenda or aspirant states, can be found at the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronation.
Here's a look at several different unrecognized states that have produced purported coinage collectors can pursue.
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HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY George II (George Cruickshank) appears on the only coinage issue of Atlantium, gold-plated 10-soldi coin, released in 2001 to mark the 20th anniversary of its founding.
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Atlantium
The Empire of Atlantium was founded on 3 Decimus, 10500 (Nov. 27, 1981), according to the empire's Web site, www.atlantium.org. Yes, Atlantium has its own calendar, based on the Annus Novus Decimal Calendar, a system used only by Atlantium that starts at the end of the last Ice Age, according to Anderson's Web site, www.joelscoins.com.
Sydney, Australia, residents George Francis Cruickshank, Geoffrey John Duggan and Claire Marie Duggan made a unilateral Declaration of Independence from the Commonwealth of Australia "in response to a perceived rise in unwelcome political influences," the Atlantium site explains.
According to e-mail from Cruickshank, Atlantium is a "global community of over 1,000 people living in 90+ countries, established for nearly a quarter of a century, promoting the idea of nonterritorial sovereignty and other progressive causes." Cruickshank did not reply to explain what those causes are.
The three founders symbolically laid claim to an approximately 10-square-meter enclave, the "Provisional Territory," located in the southern Sydney suburb of Narwee. Cruickshank became emperor, and assumed full executive, legislative and judicial authority as His Imperial Majesty George II, the site explains.
In 2001, the empire issued its first and thus far only coin, to mark the 20th anniversary of its founding. The 38-millimeter, gold-plated 10-soldi coin pictures Emperor George II and the imperial arms. Five hundred eleven of the coins, dated 10520, were struck, Anderson reports.
The Grand Duchy of Avram is one of several self-declared Australian micro nations, according to the USNS. Anderson wrote, "His Grace, Prince John, (formerly known as John Charlton), The Grand Duke of Avram, Most Honorable Marquis of Martha, the Right Honorable Earl of Enoch, the Viscount Ulom, and possessor of too many other titles to mention, got fed up with the Australian banking system."
Charlton opened the Royal Bank of Avram in Sorell, Tasmania, a shop popular with tourists and which offers bona-fide conventional banking services. "The Australian government became furious with this venture, claiming he had broken Australian banking laws," the USNS site said, but Australia's court ruled Dec. 6, 1986, "that Avram's coins were not illegal in the commonwealth and dismissed all six cases at a cost of approximately $22 million to the taxpayers (compared to the grand duke's total cost of $175)," the USNS reports.
The coins, denominated in ducals, feature a multicolor enameled coat of arms and have a mintage of only about 250 each, according to Anderson. A 2000 set includes 1-, 3-, 7-, 15-, 30- and 75-ducal coins. Avram's Web site is www,grandduchy.org.
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IN 1995 AND 1996 Seborga issued its first and only coins since the 17th century. The 1996 10-centesimo coin, left, pictures Saint Bernard, while the 1996 15-centesimo coin, middle, features Prince Giorgio I (formerly the town's mayor). The 1995 half luigino shows Prince Giorgio on one side and the Piazza San Martino on the other.
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Bermania
The Kingdom of Bermania is perhaps all in the mind of Connecticut coin dealer Allen Berman, though visitors to the "kingdom's" Web site, www.bermania.org, will learn that Bermania is a small kingdom located in the East Balkans near the Danube River. "Founded in the days of the Byzantine Empire, it has always been small, is likely to never be anything but small and as far as we are concerned that's just ducky. This foreign policy has worked very well for San Marino and we suspect it will work well for us," the site says. The most recent census counts 75 Bermanians.
Berman distributed "coins" denominated 5 denar plumb at the November 1998 "royal wedding of Alanus I and Barbara of Ulster," his own wedding. A bear dances with a wolf, symbolic of Alan and his bride. "It is a modern example of the commemorative coins that many German princes issued to mark weddings, births and deaths in their families," Anderson's site says.
The coin was minted in aluminum, silver and nickel-silver versions.
The kingdom even has a coin club, of sorts, the Bermanian Guild of Numismatists (BeGON), which meets intermittently. News from the kingdom is similarly whimsical, noting that, despite impassioned pleas from the citizens of Bermania, there are still no connecting flights to the country, so ruler Alanus I remains in exile.
Hutt River Province
The Hutt River Province is, "without a doubt the most prolific coin-issuing secessionist state in history," according to Cruickshank's Web site, www.imperial-collection.net. (Cruickshank collects coins of unrecognized states, a display of which was on display at the University of Sunderland in the United Kingdom in 2004.)
The 75-square-kilometer nation is located some 290 miles north of Perth, Australia, according to www.imperial-collection.net/hutt_river_main.html.
Leonard George Casley formed the nation after seceding from the state of Western Australia and the Australian nation itself because of a dispute over wheat quotas. Using what some saw as an arcane provision of constitutional law, Casley notified the government, and was soon prince of the province, population 12, according to Cruickshank.
The province was marked by 15 years of acrimony between two competing factions during the 1980s through 1995, and there has been little coinage activity since then.
The Kurds are an ethnic group divided between Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran. Kurds have long been promised an independent homeland but realization of the dream has been thwarted several times. After World War I, land promised to Kurds was divided between Turkey and Iraq.
After the Gulf War in 1991, Kurds in Iraq received a large degree of autonomy under the United Nations, even using an Iraqi currency (the so-called Swiss dinar, so named after the mistaken belief the notes were printed in Switzerland) different from what was used in the rest of Iraq.
With the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Kurdish groups in exile authorized the issuance of pieces for what they expected would be a new independent nation.
Turkey objected to an independent Kurdistan in Iraq, fearing Kurds in Turkey would call for more autonomy, and even threatened invasion. Plans for an independent Kurdistan failed, but circulation and error coins for the nation of Kurdistan were released anyway. The USNS considers Kurdistan a rebel government.
Nagorno-Karabakh
Nagorno-Karabakh is an ethnically Armenian enclave of Azerbaijan. With the support of the Armenian government it declared itself independent from Azerbaijan in 1992 and is a de facto independent state, with all the usual functions of government, though its independence has not been widely recognized, according to Anderson's Web site. The USNS considers it a rebel government.
It issued both coins and currency in 2004, a seven-coin set featuring wildlife and cultural icons, and 2- and 10-dram paper money issues.
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1970 COINAGE OF Purple Shaftiueland is denominated full shaft, half shaft, quarter shaft, one twist and one nudge. According to the nation's founding documents, the coins will "never go down in true value. They can't go down because they're worthless to begin with."
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Purple Shaftiueland
The origins of Purple Shaftiueland are unclear, but the USNS categorizes it as a fantasy of private creation. Anderson provided images of Purple Shaftieuland's formation "document," which is hand-written. The documents, dated Jan. 10, 1970, note that, "We already apply for thing call 'forinade.' Forinade better than lemonade. You squeeze lemon to get lemonade. You squeeze whole nation for forinade."
Coins from the nation, seemingly minted in London, are denominated, in descending order, full shaft, half shaft, quarter shaft, one twist and one nudge. "The value of the shaft is so stable that the official rate of exchange is always the same," the document notes. Conversion is simple: 100 nudges equals 10 twists, which equals 1 full shaft, which equals "nothing U.S."
The documents point out that the coins could also be considered transportation tokens, "… because you buy [them] and get taken for a ride."
A selling point for the coins, the document notes, is "that they never go down in true value. They can't go down because they're worthless to begin with."
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SEALAND COINAGE OF 1994 honors the orca, or killer whale. With a common design, the dollar appears at left, and the half dollar at right.
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Sealand
Perhaps the most famous unrecognized state is Sealand, founded as a sovereign principality in 1967 in international waters, six miles off the eastern shores of Britain, according to the official Web site, www.sealandgov.com.
Sealand is located on an abandoned 10,000-square-foot World War II-era radar platform, Roughs Tower. The official language of Sealand is English and the Sealand dollar has a fixed exchange rate of one U.S. dollar.
The independence of Sealand was upheld in a 1968 British court decision where the judge held that Roughs Tower stood in international waters and did not fall under the legal jurisdiction of the United Kingdom. This gave birth to Sealand's national motto of "E Mare Libertas," or "From the Sea, Freedom," according to Sealand's Web site.
The founders operated a pirate radio station, which gave the platform a revenue source. Since then the British government opened the country up to commercial radio, which killed off Sealand's main revenue source, according to Anderson. "Sealand now hosts Internet services for those who want their Internet activities to be beyond the reach of any national government."
In 1994 Sealand issued a Proof silver dollar coin and a Brilliant Uncirculated copper-nickel half dollar, both showing an orca, also known as a killer whale, on one side and the Sealand arms on the other.
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COIN DEALER Allen Berman issued a coin from "Bermania" to celebrate his 1998 wedding.
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Seborga
The Principality of Seborga consists of about 14 square kilometers on the Italian Riviera near France, according to Anderson. It has a population of about 2,000 and its chief industry is raising flowers. It became a principality in 1079. In 1729 it was sold to the king of Sardinia.
The paperwork never was completed, so the change was never officially registered with the Kingdom of Sardinia. Seborga was not mentioned in the Act of Unification of Italy or subsequent acts, thus it still considers itself independent, Anderson said. It has its own flag, coins, stamps, passports, and automobile license plates. In 1995 and 1996 it issued its first and only coins since the 17th century.
The brass 1996 10-centesimo coin pictures Saint Bernard, and has his arms on the reverse. The copper-nickel 1996 15-centesimo coin features Prince Giorgio I (formerly the town's mayor). The 1995 half luigino is a ringed bimetallic coin featuring Prince Giorgio on one side and the Piazza San Martino on the other.
There are clearly many, many more issues from unrecognized states, too many to even glance at here. "There's enough to write a book," Anderson said. One book that includes some of these issues is Unusual World Coins, by Colin R. Bruce II, of which a newly expanded fourth edition was recently released.
The USNS Web site provides links, mostly to Cruickshank's Web site, providing more information about unrecognized states issues. Wikipedia and Anderson's Web site are also good places to learn more about the states' history.
Using the state names compiled by the USNS, a Google search could also reveal information about the state. To buy some of the coins mentioned, telephone or fax Anderson at (805) 489-8045, visit Anderson's Web site at www.joelscoins.com or e-mail him at joel@joelscoins.com.
All images courtesy of Joel Anderson and www.joelscoins.com.
