What's up plebs?
Yesterday we had a wild golden piece appearing in my posts...But today we return to our regular schedule of silver coins...from Germany :p
So, this time we have...
The one and only Carl Friedrich Gauss!
Now that's a fella I love! And you should do. Cause he was awesome.
Long story short, he was a German mathematician and scientist, widely considered as one of the greatest mathematicians ever. His contributions were in all kinds of fields like number theory, statistics, astronomy, geometry and physics. Nicknamed the prince of Mathematics, he is considered to be one of the founders of modern number theory. Feel free to visit Wikipedia if you'd like to read up more on him.
Back to the coin now. I really don't like the design of the portrait here. He looks like a soulless zombie lmao. I really wish they had done a better job since I am a fan of him. Oh well 😥
Portrait by by Christian Albrecht Jensen, 1840, Public Domain
Anyways, time to flip the coin on the other side
As is the case with all the German commemorative coins we have seen, we have a unique design of the imperial chicken, denomination (5 marks) and the minting date. Unlike with the portrait of gauss, I really like what they did with the chicken here. Beautiful!
And of course let's not forget the edge. Germans always pay attention to the details and place some unique and related to the theme text, which is one of the reasons I like them so much:
It reads
PAUCA ** SED ** MATURA
For
Few, but ripe
Hmmmm 🤔
That sounds cryptic!
I asked Google Gemini about it, this is that what it had to say
This quote is attributed to German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, and it is said to have been one of his favorites. It expresses the idea that it's better to do a few things well and thoroughly than to do many things poorly or incompletely. The emphasis is on quality over quantity.
If he wasn't a mathematician... He would make a great life coach 😁
Something I forgot to mention is that this is a commemorative coin issued in 1977 for the 200th Anniversary since the birth of Carl Friedrich Gauss.
When it comes to silver we get the usual 0.625 purity and weight of 11.2 g. That's exactly 7 grams of pure silver.
Today's spot stands at 0.93$ per gram so this little fella has a melting value of about 6.5$.
Here are some more quick stats from Numista in case you care
Issuer: Federal Republic of Germany
Period: Federal Republic (1949-date)
Type: Non-circulating coin
Year: 1977
Value: 5 Deutsche Mark (5 DEM)
Currency: Deutsche Mark (1948-2001)
Composition: Silver (.625) (Copper .375)
Weight: 11.2 g
Diameter: 29 mm
Thickness: 2.07 mm
Shape: Round
Technique: Milled
Orientation: Medal alignment ↑↑
Demonetized: 31 December 2001
And this my fellow plebs concludes today's post. I am a fan of Gauss so naturally I love having this piece in my collection. I just wish they had done a better job with his portrait 😄
As always, see you soon with more shiny!
Stack on!