Affected by war and the pillage of inflation, our next focus in our blog series covering Whitman Publishing’s 100 Greatest Modern World Coins is a key date of a series of coins that would take its final bow just a few short years after its introduction. Authors Charles Morgan and Hubert Walker will help guide us through this series from France and the importance of not only its coinage type, but its groundbreaking design.
#91 – France 1929 Gold 100 Francs
France would produce three circulating gold coins in denominations of 20, 50, and 100 francs before the onslaught of World War I. Only the 100 francs would survive the aftermath and continue to make sense producing, even though its weight was reduced significantly to under one-fifth of an ounce of gold. Inflation would ultimately be the cause and the effect of the gold 100 franc being no more.
First struck in 1929, the French 100 francs gold coin featured the design of Engraver Lucien Georges Bazor courtesy of an open competition that included ten of France’s top artists. His design was drenched in the Art Deco movement which evolved after the turn of the century. It would see its pinnacle in the late 1920s and early 1930s, making Bazor’s winning design the exact update the coin needed. The obverse depicted the female appearance of Marianne. It would only see production for two years at a level worth producing circulating gold coins, with the last of the series seeing the highest production in 1935 and 1936.
According to authors Morgan and Walker, the French most likely would have trouble spending such coins as the gold 100 franc. A clear indication of this is the massive difference in mintage numbers from the beginning of the series to the nearly 13.8 million that were produced in the final years of the coinage type. Earlier mintage issues are only reported as “scant” and the idea of certified examples? Almost nonexistent. It is reported that only NGC has certified an early and rare date of Bazor’s 100 franc. Only a meager 50 examples are known of the 100-franc circulation strike, and of those few, even fewer are known to have survived. If one is encountered at an auction, it is mostly likely an essai striking, which contains variants in gold and the aluminum-bronze that were produced.
Other issues besides 1929 that are rarely encountered are the 1932 and 1934 strikes. Only one example has ever been certified (NGC) of the 1932. That coin was listed for sale by its owner in 2017 for over $70,000. One of the more accessible of the early dates is 1933 as there is an approximate mintage of 300 examples known. Those coins can bring upwards to $3,000.