“Trutz” means “defiance”; Google Translate makes hash out of the phrase, but I think it means “All powers lend themselves to defiance” or something along those lines. In the context of an austerity coin issued by the Weimar republic, I don’t really know how to interpret it. (That is, I can think of several opposing but equally believable interpretations, depending on which political faction was in charge of issuing the notgeld.)
There are reports of exceptions; though I’ve also been told that coins with sufficiently low production values are often classified as ‘tokens’ instead; which are not-coins because reasons(the reasons are more obvious if the tokens are some sort of company scrip or low denomination gift certificate circulating alongside a normal fiat currency; they strike me as something closer to numismatic snobbery when the local fiat currency situation is seriously disrupted or all over the place and it’s a free-for-all of variously dodgy private label coinage).
For reasons that…definitely reflect a commitment to heavy metal coinage; rather than any of the more mundane and morally suspect… obvious applications of a 19.3g/cm3 metal core plated in a considerably more valuable metal of the same density; tungsten coins appear to be a thing; so long as you want them gold plated.
I don’t know of anyone doing more honest tungsten coinage; but someone ought to.
Osmium, Rhenium; or Iridium would be even better; but are all suboptimimal to work within in a variety of ways; so there are likely good reasons we don’t see them much.
Osmium would be quite the health hazard, as it oxidizes in air to form the highly toxic osmium tetroxide. Iridium and rhenium are very rare in the earth’s crust, so they would make platinum seem cheap.
On the heads side… Is that the standard Liz 2 portrait on UK coins now? I googled “queen elizabeth profile” and it doesn’t look like a good likeness to me.
Edit: Duh, yeah, I forgot that the Isle of Man is an independent country and not part of the UK. So… nevermind. But they probably should have just asked the UK if they can use their portrait.
