Malaysia modern issues: $ vs RM

I came across about a half pound of Malaysia off paper recently, and sorted them by definitive series like always, with a pile for states issues and a pile for commemoratives.  I had fun filling up stock pages with rows of these issues, and did a quick check of catalog values to see if it was worth doing.  That's when I found that the fruit series splits into two major sets: the first set has the denominations in C and $, where the second set has values in sen and RM.  The first set catalogs from minimum up to about $1, but the second set of sen/RM list for $6 each with a few unpriced, even in the 2024 catalog.

I have no idea why these are unpriced.  They are essentially the same as the other values, showing up in mixes in the same quantities.  There is nothing that makes them more uncommon or harder to appraise.  I was actually expecting the prices to go down between the 2021 and 2024 catalogs, as always happens for issues from 5-10 years ago.

On the interesting side, I saw a few of the state flowers with new designs, and sure enough, they also has their values in sen and RM.  I haven't looked those up yet, but out of 1000 state flowers in this mix, I found only 9 of those.

The Malaysian currency is ringgit (RM stands for Ringgit Malaysia), and after the Asian currency crisis of 1997 and another year of uncertainty, it was pegged to the US Dollar ($) in September 1998.  The switch back to RM values from US Dollars happened on 21 July 2005 (*), following China's big move to unpeg its own currency from the USD.  The history of the Malaysian ringgit currency is fascinating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_ringgit  It turns out that the name ringgit is from the Malay word for "jagged", describing the serrated edges of the old Spanish coins that circulated in the area.

In 1998, the RM was pegged at 3.80 RM per USD for a few years, and it's current value (21 Nov 2023) is 4.76 RM per USD.

Here are some of the Malaysia stamps described above ... first a mix of C/$ issues, then the same set with sen/RM valuations.



 

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