Krause Publications has named ten Coin of the Year winners. None are U.S. coins and because I don't know world coins all that well, did a search for images of the winning coins. I've posted these images on MetaCoin. All the winners are to be 2009-dated coins, but I cannot find an image or reference for a 2009 10-euro France silver Mother Teresa and Child coin, so posted the 2010 image. If someone has an image link for the 2009-dated coin of this theme, please post a reply and I'll update. Thanks.
like the basilisk and rhino pieces the most. doesnt take a whole lot to figure out why none of the us coins would win those awards. lol
The link does currently not work for me, so I cannot see the pieces. But the Mother Teresa coins (four denominations) are all dated 2010. Christian
Christian- Squarespace (where my blog is hosted) can be flakey at times, like this morning. You could try going to metacoin.com; should be in the top few posts. Interesting about the Mother Teresa coin dates, because the article specifically says these are to be 2009-dated coins. Ignoring the 'Most' and 'Best' classifications, looking at just the designs, I like the 100-Rand White Rhino, the Finland piece, and oddly for me (because I'm generally not a fan of added color on coins), the Canada Native American gold. Other than the values shown on the coins I find it hard to distinguish these NCLTs (non-circulating legal tender coins) from medals. I posted some thoughts about that here.
Ah yes, it worked fine for me a few minutes ago. As for the Mother Teresa coin, I still don't think there is a 2009 variety. So either Krause made a mistake (hard to believe since the year can easily be seen if you look at the piece), or they include 2010 coins too. We will see what happens in Berlin in late January. The designs ... I assume that most people who like the Austrian coin, for example, will not like the Finnish coin, and vice cersa. I prefer the piece from Finland, but I am not fond of such "theme" series. (The 2009 coin looks better than this year's piece though.) Note that the Finnish coin has a tiny colored area too. Are they coins? Sure, issued by (or on behalf of) some country/government, and "legal tender" there. Are they used for payments? Well, the €2 coin from Slovakia can actually be found in circulation in the euro area. And the Austrian €10 coin could at least theoretically circulate (only in Austria though, not in any other euro country) as it was issued at face. The others were probably surcharged, maybe proof-only, issues - the Finnish and French silver coins sure are. I have seen the term "medal-coin" for the latter kind before; that I find confusing. I can issue a medal but I cannot issue a coin. The differentiation is also useful for practical reasons: A modern coin will usually be listed in a coin catalog; a modern medal will not. The term NCLT is fine with me; maybe pseudo-coin if one wants something handier. Such awards, however, make sense in my opinion; this way sculptors and other artists may be encouraged to (continue to) design coins. Christian
Apparently Krause noticed that there is no 2009 Mother Teresa coin. In the original version of their article http://www.numismaster.com/ta/numis/Article.jsp?ad=article&ArticleId=15366 they wrote: The current version of that article says: Christian
Christian- I knew the Mother Teresa coin was disqualified but didn't realize Krause had replaced it with the Poland coin. Thanks for the update. I've added images of the Poland 10 Zlotych silver to my original post on MetaCoin here.
