Greece became a member of the European Monetasry Union in 1999. Last year (2009) Greece celebrated that 10th Anniversary with a 2 Euro Coin. Here's a photo of that 10 year commemorative courtesy of Don's World Coin Gallery (worldcoingallery.com): Thought you might want to know... Clinker
Ha, euro coins I know very well. No, Greece was not a euro area member in 1999 - the country joined "Euroland" on 1-Jan-2001. This €2 commem was issued by all euro area member states, to commemorate ten years of the euro/EMU. See here: http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/euro/cash/commemorative/10years_emu_en.htm However, the designer of that coin is from Greece. Georgios Stamatopoulos, who also designed the Greek circulation coins, participated in the design contest. Officially nobody knew during the vote who made the partipicating designs. He won the public vote; unfortunately that vote was heavily influenced by a web campaign in Greece to "vote for the Greek design" ... Christian
Hi Christian... You are right... Don't know why I wrote it that way...Thanks for correcting and the addendum... Clinker
Clinker - Hope such posts won't keep you from writing your "trivia". While I do know quite a bit about the euro, many other stories you post are either new for me, or present a new view. Also, I hope you can now tell that I am not so fond of that "euro/stickman" design, hehe. Christian
Hi mat: Maybe you should decide to collect only Euros from a country associated with your ancestry, countries you visited as a civilian or while in the military, or a country you might enjoy touring in the future. Then there are those € 2 Commemoratives to think about... Clinker
...such as this one. Here is this year's €2 commem from Greece, a coin that commemorates the Battle of Marathon. Now I don't speak Greek, but the text in the upper part (ΜΑΡΑΘΩΝΑΣ 2500 ΧΡΟΝΙΑ) means Marathon 2500 Years. Below you have the country name (ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΙ ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑ, ie. Greek or Hellenic Republic), and the dates: 490 Π.Χ. and 2010 Μ.Χ. - that is, 490 B.C. and 2010 A.D. The other side has the usual design of the €2 coins. As you can tell, this is an image of the design, not of an actual coin ... Christian
Hi Chris, Do these commemorative €2 coins circulate in general? Do certain countries' commems circulate more than another's? Or are they purely for collectors? I know in the UK they do circulate (commem 50p and £2 coins), but certain ones are not encountered often. I'll find out in a few weeks! Cheers!
Basically they do circulate. The coin that Clinker shows in the first post had a mintage of 4 million (the Greek issue alone). Of this year's coin from Greece, about 2.5 million pieces will be issued. In general the German €2 commems are easy to get, and one actually comes across them, as the issue volume (all mints combined) is 30 million per piece. The other extreme, so to say, is the three non-EU countries that issue euro coins. They do not give the €2 commems away at face. And of course even a commemorative coin that actually circulates in, say, Finland will not be common in Cyprus for example. Christian
