Palestine, ZIKHRON YA’AKOV, [Yehuda Wormser], brass Piastre and Half-Piastre (Haffner CC-17a, 17b). First good fine, second very fine, rare £300-500

Provenance: Baldwin Auction 6, 11 October 1995, lots 894, 895.

The settlement of Zikhron Ya’akov was founded in 1882 and bankrolled by Baron Edmund de Rothschild. His representative, Yehuda Wormser, decided that local tokens should be issued to overcome the shortage of small change and make people less dependent on the money-changers who were making a very tidy living out of changing the many different types of currency then circulating in Palestine. The tokens were struck in Paris in 1885 and endorsed by de Rothschild to the tune of 30,000 gold francs. Initially the tokens saw wide acceptance, but following an incident in which a Turkish district officer from Cæsarea, visiting the settlement to check on unlicensed building activity, unwittingly observed an Arab settler counting his tokens and declared them an illegal Jewish issue in a country administered by Turkey, the tokens had to be withdrawn. Sold with further background detail and some photographs, c. 1990