Each Euro country is permitted issue up to 2 circulating commemorative designs per year. This is one of Germany's for 2017. It is a nice find, since they tend to be low mintage.
That is a commemorative €2 coin from the "German States" series. The 2017 piece honors the state of Rheinland-Pfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate). Its capital is Mainz, on the Rhine river, but the occasion-specific obverse shows the Porta Nigra in Trier. Christian
As modern coinage goes, the €2 commemoratives are a reasonably interesting series (more so, I think, than recent US circulating commems). I've started acquiring them from the EU countries I've visited.
While I find them interesting too, I think there are too many now. Even worse, some member states (Belgium comes to mind, others too) now issue them in surcharged coincards only. Germany still makes millions of each issue, and usually issues one per year only. 2018 was an exception (States series: Berlin, plus Helmut Schmidt born 100 years ago). Next year there will be a second one too (States series: Brandenburg, plus Willy Brandt's 1970 Kniefall) ... Christian
Agreed . . . just like US, Canada, UK and pretty much every other major coin issuer. That's why I decided to limit myself to just EU countries I've visited: so far Germany, Austria and Italy (UK and Czech Rep. don't count, since they never adopted the EU monetary system). That keeps it more manageable, and it's also fun to combine two interests — coin collecting and travel — into one.
