Weird issuers

In history, some weird places have issued coins. Some "states" with about 5000 inhabitants for example. (Please, no fantasy issues)

Here are a few examples of weird ones:

Crimea https://en.numista.com/catalogue/crimea-1.html
Cocos keeling islands- https://en.numista.com/catalogue/cocos-1.html
Greenland, thule kap york https://en.numista.com/catalogue/groenland-3.html#c_groenland6674
Cities such as riga and Turku
Siberia - im still wondering why they struck coins for use in Siberia. https://en.numista.com/catalogue/siberia-1.html


Do you know some weirder ones?

British Antarctic Territory -- I wonder what percentage of these coins ever saw circulation in Antarctica?

Cita: "phfoticus"​British Antarctic Territory -- I wonder what percentage of these coins ever saw circulation in Antarctica?

​None.

Icenlandic and Greenland mining colonies are very scarce and intriguing. Some weird are medieval cities, which minted only few coins.

Cita: "phfoticus"​British Antarctic Territory -- I wonder what percentage of these coins ever saw circulation in Antarctica?

​Probably ~0-10.

Siberia coins were minted because of coin shortage. I also learnt that that "Siberia" means "Sleeping land"

Lundy springs to mind.

Dude buys his own island and mints his own coins called the "Puffin"

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/lundy-1.html

Cita: "neilithicman"​Lundy springs to mind.
​
​Dude buys his own island and mints his own coins called the "Puffin"
​
​https://en.numista.com/catalogue/lundy-1.html

​The first micronation to mint coins!

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/corvay_abbey-1.html#c_corvay_abbey3694
These were used in a monastery?

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces127305.html
Then there are the ones used during sieges

Cita: "neilithicman"​Lundy springs to mind.
​
​Dude buys his own island and mints his own coins called the "Puffin"
​
​https://en.numista.com/catalogue/lundy-1.html

​"Penny" was probably too mainstream for his liking.

If you're bringing Lundy up, I'll introduce the other three micronations issuers; Hutt River, Sealand and Seborga.

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/principality-of-hutt-river-1.html
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/sealand-1.html
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/seborga-1.html

The first two pretty much have the same origin story as Lundy (basically someone's vanity project ), but the veneer of legitimacy conferred on Seborga by history makes the last one more interesting IMO. It was sold to Savoy in 1729, but this sale is disputed by the "secessionists". Read more here:
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic69852.html

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/index.php?mode=simplifie&p=1&l=bophuthatswana&r=&e=bophuthatswana&d=&ca=3&no=&i=&v=&m=&a=&t=&dg=&w=&u=&f=&g=&c=&tb=y&tc=y&tn=y&tp=y&tt=y&te=y&cat=y
BOPHUTHATSWANA
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/ordre_de_malte-1.html
the "country" with no area nowadays. Just an office in Rome.
And of course, the "only remaining part of the USSR"

Siberian coins are an interesting story - basically, the copper from the big Siberian mine at the time contained something like 1% silver (plus trace amounts of gold), which was enough to substantially change the official melt value of the resulting copper, but not enough for separation of the silver (and gold) to be sufficiently profitable with mid-18th century technology.

The "solution" was to make special coins from that copper, whose face value was proportional to the official melt value, so for the same face value the coins were somewhat smaller than their mainland Russian counterparts.

Eventually someone figured out that this wasn't actually that good of an idea (it helped that advances in technology finally made extracting that 1% of silver profitable), and the issue of special Siberian coins stopped (though the Suzun mint that used to make them continued operation, now making regular-issue Russian coinage, for the next several decades; I don't recall when exactly they finally closed down, but they did make it to at least the 1840s).

Cita: "January First-of-May"​Siberian coins are an interesting story - basically, the copper from the big Siberian mine at the time contained something like 1% silver (plus trace amounts of gold), which was enough to substantially change the official melt value of the resulting copper, but not enough for separation of the silver (and gold) to be sufficiently profitable with mid-18th century technology.
​
​The "solution" was to make special coins from that copper, whose face value was proportional to the official melt value, so for the same face value the coins were somewhat smaller than their mainland Russian counterparts.
​
​Eventually someone figured out that this wasn't actually that good of an idea (it helped that advances in technology finally made extracting that 1% of silver profitable), and the issue of special Siberian coins stopped (though the Suzun mint that used to make them continued operation, now making regular-issue Russian coinage, for the next several decades; I don't recall when exactly they finally closed down, but they did make it to at least the 1840s).

​Thanks for sharing the story! That is interesting.