Switzerland (1850-2016)

The period of modern numismatics (since about 1800) is perhaps the most interesting ever. Within this period different types of standards (silver, gold, bimetallic) alternated, and periods of sometimes impressive inflation occurred, resulting in alternate use of metallic (coins) and paper (treasury notes, banknotes) money. In this series of books it is aimed to develop a scientific classification of the different appearances of circulating money (both coins and different types of paper and polymer money) in one system. It focuses purely on permanent circulation money to avoid incorporation of modern commemorative coins that are in many instances hardly seeing any circulation. The currency described in this series is classified according to a newly developed classification scheme, that is based on four levels: i) The nominal value, ii) The first year a new coin or paper money series is issued, iii) The year of a specific issue and iv) variations of specimens within a year. As the catalogues in this book series are type catalogues they focus on the first two levels of this classification only. This third volume describes the circulation coin and paper money types from Switzerland that was issued between 1850 and 2016. That concerns all normal circulation money that circulated in the country since the moment that the confederation (the country as a whole) took over the responsibility to issue coins from the subdivisions of the country, the cantons. It describes the coins and paper money stricktly in increasing nominal value from the lowest (the rappen coin) to the highest (the 1000 Franken note). During the reporting period the Franken as Swiss denomination was never redominated. The Swiss currency has always been one of the most stable in the world which is reflected by a relativley small number of coin series and a few of the longest running coins series that are known world-wide.