The Euro was created on January 1, 1999 by the European central bank. It replaced the ECU succeeding the European Monetary Institute. Conversion rates between the original 11 (Greece was delayed pending economic criteria) countries were determined by the Council of the European Union based on the market rates on 12/31/1998 making the ECU equal 1 Euro. The currency of the participating countries ceased to exist in non-physical form at that time. Existing notes and coins continued to be used until the new ones were introduced on 1/1/2002 Production for the new notes and coins in May 1998, however they were not issued for circulation until January 2002. 7 countries struck the coins bearing the 2002 date. The other 5 countries used the year the coins were struck. Therefore those countries would have coins dated 1999,2000, and 2001. In December 2001 banks began exchanging the existing coins for “Euro starter kits”. These would not be usable until 2002. The nations were allowed to accept existing currency as legal tender until 2/28/2002. At that time the legal tender exchange ceased to exist. However in 6 countries the old currency is still being exchanged. Greece was the last to be accepted to the original 12. San Marino, Monaco, and the Vatican also issued small amounts of coinage. In 2007 Slovenia was added to the Euro, Cyprus and Malta in 2008, and Slovakia in 2009. In the Baltics, Estonia joined in 2010, Latvia in 2013, and Lithuania in 2014. The latest to join was Andorra in 2014 and started circulation in 2015. Prior to that, Andorra did not have an official currency, using the French Franc and the Spanish Peseta as currency until that time. This makes 23 nations with coinage bearing the Euro designation. My collection includes un-circulated coinage from all 23 of those countries. Most of the sets are not mint sets with the same year for each coin. Monaco, Vatican, and Andorra are from official Mints sets and are the more valuable of the collection. Most are housed in a Dansco album created for that purpose with extra pages added as the nations joined the Euro. Monaco and Andorra remain in the original mint packaging. I chose not to remove the coins from the Dansco in order to take photographs since I did not want to risk touching the coins. Therefore the photos are not as good as if they were not shielded in the plastic sleeves. Regular circulating coinage, which is accepted as legal tender in any Euro Country, consist of the 1,2,5,10,20, and 50 Euro Cents, and the 1 and 2 Euro Dollar. The reverse of the coins are the same for all of the Euro zone nations. 2 Euro Dollar 25.75 mm Bimetallic Copper-Nickel 1 Euro Dollar 23.25 mm Bimetallic Copper-Nickel 50 Euro Cent 24.25 mm Copper-Aluminum-Zinc 20 Euro Cent 22.25 mm Copper-Aluminum-Zinc 10 Euro Cent 19.75 mm Copper-Aluminum-Zinc 5 Euro Cent 21.25 mm Copper-Steel 2 Euro Cent 18.75 mm Copper-Steel 1 Euro Cent 16.25 mm Copper-Steel Noncirculating Euro commemorative coins are legal tender only in the country of issue. These are only allowed in denominations different from circulating coinage. This rule was revised in 2004, allowing Euro zone nations to issue one circulating commemorative 2 Euro Dollar each year. Presented in Alphabetical order with the year of joining the Euro. Since the reverse design is common to all the countries, I show only one example. COMMON REVERSE ANDORRA 2015 AUSTRIA 1999 BELGIUM 1999 CYPRUS 2008 More to come...
SLOVAKIA 2009 SLOVENIA 2007 SPAIN 1999 VATICAN 1999 That's all until the next nation joins. Which is your favorite?
Super nice collection! Maybe GB will join us soon ...can you imagine a 2 Euro coin with the Queen on the obverse LOL
I really liked the Irish Harp coin. I thought that was a beautiful coin. I think the EU is a questionable idea in this time of terrorism.
A country that will hopefully soon leave the European Union is not likely to introduce the common currency. Yes, I know that, especially in American or British forums, a discussion about the euro will almost inevitably turn into a political debate. But let's try to focus on coins. More about the euro is here: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/the-euro.17115/ Christian
The names of the currency is "euro", not "euro dollar". As for "cent", the name of that unit is "cent", but "euro" was added, in smaller characters, to make the identification easier. The four small countries (AD, MC, SM, VA) are not EU member states and thus issue euro coins based on monetary agreements with the European Union. That is also why Andorra started using the euro from Day One, so to say, but could not issue coins until 2014. (Right, the set above was not available until '15. ) What coins do I like best? Primarily those from countries that picked eight different designs for the eight denominations. First of all Italy (see my avatar) but also Slovenia and San Marino ... Christian
Sorty, I didn't try to get political. In my opinion the comment in post #9 is political and unrelated to the Euro as a common currency. I was just trying to make fun of the Brits (I like you guys, no worries ;-)
Well, I wrote a tongue-fairly-firmly-in-cheek reply myself. OK, back to designs - the map on the reverse is indeed the same for every member state, but a user or collector will still come across two different versions of the mid-range and €1/€2 coins: Until 2007/2008 they showed a map of the European Union as it was in 1999. Since then it has been the map of Europe that @sonlarson shows in his initial post ... Christian
I didn't catch that. I used the 2009 Vatican set for my reverse photo. I went back and looked and the earlier design is indeed slightly different. Thanks for pointing that out. I learned something. Another note, look at the set from Slovenia. i just about drove myself crazy trying to decide how to orient the obverse. if i lined it up with the reverse correctly the obverse designs were all over the place. If I lined up the obverse design to orient the picture, the lettering and dates were all askew. I chose to orient the pictures.
Don't worry, you are not alone. The designs from Slovenia look a little "messy" anyway because the designers put the country name in the circle of stars on the ring. Today the twelve stars from the European Flag are supposed to appear on the coins as they appear on the flag. But as you can see on the coins from various member states, that was not mandatory in the early years.* The coins from Slovenia should, like the others, have a "twelve o'clock star" at the very top. In the case of the 10 cent coin, that would be the star above the S in "svobode" ... But the central bank of Slovenia depicts the coins the way you do, hehe. * Today the designs from Luxembourg and the Netherlands that you show above would not be OK; neither are the Austrian designs (repetition of the face value) and the German ones (no country identifier). Ah well, the member states have some time for "fixing" the wrong designs - the deadline is 20 June 2062. (No, that is not a typo. ) Christian
Nice set sonlarson! I visited Erupoe just before they introduced the Euro, and was in Britain when it officially went into use. I'm a little sad I didn't start collecting these then, but then I've got too many other areas of interest already...
