| Slot: |
100 PESETAS 1897 (*18-*97) |
| Origin/Country: |
SPAIN 1848 TO DATE |
| Design Description: |
GOLD 100 PESETAS ORIGINAL |
| Item Description: |
G100P 1897(97) SGV KM708 |
| Grade: |
NGC MS 62 |
| Research: |
View Coin |
Owner Comments
Mintage: 149,762.
Portrait of Alfonso XIII engraved by Bartolomé Maura in July 1895 when Alfonso XIII was 9 years old.
SGV = Sandoval, Garcia, Vega.
Somewhat common in circulated condition. Scarce in Mint State condition.
The 100-peseta coins, minted only in 1897, helped finance Spain's military operations in its province of Cuba that it had governed for 400 years. Ultimately Spain lost Cuba in 1898 after imperialist aggressors in the United States "boldly" provoked a war against the then 11-year-old king of Spain.
By the 1930s, the majority of these 100-peseta coins were being stored in Spain's national gold reserve at the Bank of Spain in Madrid. In his 2001 book "El oro de Moscú y el oro de Berlín," Professor Pablo Martín-Aceña includes a picture (between pp 128-129) from the Bank of Spain's photograph archives that shows a 4' x 4' metal display table in the Bank vault with Spanish 100-peseta coins stacked on top in a pyramid shape and encased with a protective glass cover. Using 15 coins per stack (or, in some tiers, 14 coins per stack), the base of the pyramid consisted of a square of 27 stacks x 27 stacks (total of 729 stacks), then tapered to a square of 26 x 26 (676 stacks), and continued tapering to a single stack at the top, forming a pyramid totaling 27 tiers. Altogether the "pirámide de monedas españolas de oro" contained 100,000 100-peseta coins ("10 millones de pesetas"), which is about two-thirds of the total original mintage.
These coins were shipped to the Soviet Union in November 1936 at the start of the Spanish Civil War when the Republican government, who controlled Madrid but was under siege, sought to buy armaments from the Soviet Union and other countries. The Republican government shipped to Moscow most of the national gold reserve housed in Madrid, an amount of 510 tonnes of gold, almost all of it in gold coins minted by fifteen countries (sovereigns, pesetas, francs, marks, lire, etc) that made Spain's gold reserve the fourth largest in the world at the time. The reserve was then systematically sold off to purchase war materials. Since the 100-peseta coins had no numismatic premium at the time, it is likely that they were melted down. You can read an Internet account of this fascinating historical episode at Wikipedia's article titled "Moscow Gold (Spain)."
| | |