Even in its own time this 1930 1-krona could have been looked at as a survivor, and likely—if they stopped to think about it—would have been a source of pride for contemporary Swedes. After all, the SMU of 1873 had crumpled with the outbreak of WWI, and although it survived the war in truncated form, the SMU can really be said to have been ended in 1924. Danish and Norwegian small coins had assumed shapes, sizes and metals that marked them as coins that could only be used domestically, and only Sweden still adhered to the original SMU forms.
By the time production of these 1930 1-krona pieces ended, more had been coined than of any other date to that point of the 20th century. But why not? They appeared in that last good year, just before the go-go days in Sweden…stopped.
Sweden was hit perhaps harder than most. By the general economic slowdown of the early-thirties precipitated in the U.S. by the sharp shock of the ’29 Wall Street crash, but also by the credit crunch caused by the Austrian banking crisis of ’31—and the consequent bursting of Sweden’s own special speculative bubble, the one overinflated by “Match-king” Ivar Kreuger.
Production of the 1-krona would fall nearly 40% for 1931, remaining there each year until 1934, when it fell an additional 40%. Still, Sweden did remarkably well, considering—and the 1-krona mintages during the second half of the 1930s suggest as much.
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