1997 Hong Kong Half Ounce Year of the Ox Gold Medallion

[LawrenceChard]

This is the first time I have seen one of these:

1997 Hong Kong Half Ounce Year of the Ox Gold Medallion

All I know about it is what I can see on the medal itself.

VICTORIA DEI GRATIA BRITANNIAR REG FD

MDCCCXLII (1842)

HONG KONG

Anybody know more?

😎

[dicker]

I think this was a RM “lunar” creation for the local HK market, but may have been a “Handover” coin to mark return of HK to Chinese control - possibly slightly in disguise!  1997 was famously the year Chris Patten cried in the rain while ceding control to the Chinese as our “lease” expired.

1842 was the year Britain seized control of HK and the picture is presumably a junk sailing in front of HK harbour and the picture representing trading.

Best

Dicker

 

[Roy]

30 minutes ago, dicker said:

1997 was famously the year Chris Patten cried in the rain while ceding control to the Chinese as our “lease” expired.

The end of the British Empire (and the beginning of the end of Hong Kong too).

[Bruce06]

I remembered when i traveled in Europe in Sep 1997, someone asked me (maybe British i forget) what was changed in Hong Kong since handover, n i said nothing at that moment.  But if you ask me the same question now, i will say everything.

[RDHC]

Handsome coin. Slight worry is that the bales on the quayside might well have contained opium in the mid-19th century, a trade that the British rather forced on a weak China (though I don't know for sure that the opium actually passed through HK; it could have gone direct to Shanghai, I suppose).