Appreciation of the First United Nations General Assembly’s Sample Coin

黄星博

After the victory of the anti-fascist struggle in World War II, on October 24, 1945, the Charter of the United Nations was ratified by China, the Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and most of the other signatories and came into force; the United Nations was then established. From January 10 to February 14, 1946, the First General Assembly of the United Nations was held in Central Hall, Westminster, London, the United Kingdom, attended by representatives from 51 founding member countries. In the Assembly, Triegwe Halfdan Rye from Norway was appointed the first Secretary-General of the United Nations, the rules of procedure of the United Nations Security Council adopted, the United States' invitation to permanently establish the United Nations’ headquarters in New York accepted, and the United Nations organization system began to operate officially.

In the Assembly, some member countries proposed that the countries around the world could unify their currencies and languages after the war so that all peoples could work and live in harmony. To carry out this idea, the Assembly minted a sample coin. On its front side, there are the national flags of France, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China (at that time, China was represented by the Republic of China) from left to right, whose names are marked next to their own flagpoles and written as "FRANCE" , "ENRLAND" , "USA" , "CCCP", and "中國" in Chinese respectively. The lower arc part below the flagpoles is marked with "UNITED NATIONS"; at the top are "MONETARY UNITY" and "WORLD PEACE"; at the bottom is "ESSAI．DUCATION" in French and "1946". At the center of the back side, there are four words, namely “RELIGION”, “FEAR”, “SPEECH”, and “WANT”, forming a circle and respectively having a sculpture beside them. At the top is the word "FREEDOM". The design of the sample coin is unique with exquisite carving and profound meaning, which results in its high artistic value and historical value.

In order to prepare for the official issuance of the United Nations unified currency, 1,000 silver sample coins were minted and mainly given to the representatives from member countries attending the Assembly. Later, the United Nations unified currency was not issued successfully because the countries failed to reach a consensus, which makes the sample coins priceless items in studying the history and social values. As time passes, the sample coins have been difficult to find . According to the official inquiry of PCGS, there are only 17 samples confirmed and filed by PCGS scores by 2023, which are collected by some great state museums or important people.

The appearance of the silver sample coins of the First United Nations General Assembly’s unified currency in China provides an important item related to the major historical event of the First United Nations General Assembly, which further confirms China's great, outstanding contribution to the anti-fascist struggle in the Second World War and the founding of the United Nations. The sample coin appreciated in this paper was confirmed as "SP64" by PCGS testing, and there are only 4 samples confirmed with this score, which was the runner-up score of PCGS official archived samples (The champion score is SP65 and 3 sample coins have this score.). As an important historical item of the major global event that happened so many years ago, this sample coin is well preserved and so rare and precious.