Nominations open for Ugliest Coin Design

There's certainly some terrible ones given the plethora of offerings, but there are also a lot of nice ones that are probably better than anything the mint is doing.

 

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A good number of the"special" coins that the Canadian RCM puts out every year certainly fit in this category .. they have become a granny bait and kid's crayon creation factory churning out scores of unwanted product every year.

 

These are some of the milder designs-they've got some florid colorized coins that are selling for $200!

 

Lots of ugly coins have been issued by countries that I do not actively collect. So pieces from Niue or Palau I can safely ignore ... in this topic too. In my collection, one of my all-time non-favorites is the 50 Years of German Television collector coin, see this post. As for the French 10 francs piece, well, what I don't like about it is how they combined the "denomination band" (good IMO) and the ornate obverse.

The funny thing is that this coin was replaced by a smaller one (Jimenez's République) in 1986 which then was replaced by ... Mathieu's old piece, hehe. The later bimetallic coins (Génie de la Bastille, Mont Saint Michel) I like.

Christian

 

Well I'm sorry I like it. I can see it didn't quite do what the designer had in mind but... I like it.

 

The reverse on any Switzerland coin. Uninspiring and hasn't changed in over 150 years.

 

At least the obverse of the 5 Fr. makes a neat Skeletor hobo token!

 

Guess they like this kind of continuity. Even the obverses have, except for the 5 Fr coin, not changed much since the late 1870s. Interestingly, Swiss paper money is updated more often, and looks quite modern ...

Christian

 

Belgian king Boudewijn. He looks like dead.

 

Another terrible Belgian coin.

 

Agree!

 

I actually kinda like l'ultime franc. It's got a nice minimalist aesthetic. Normally, I don't like doing things like dates and mottoes as edge lettering, but it works here. And it really was "l'ultime franc," since France joined the Euro shortly after it was minted. The only thing I kind of dislike is that I'm not sure I'd want to put it in an Air-Tite, because it would obscure the edge.

 

France was actually a founding member of the currency union in 1999 (*), and Starck's Last Franc piece was issued to commemorate the last year of the franc cash. And yes, I like it too, but I also find Laenen's Baudouin/Boudewijn 5 fr coin interesting. Maybe just because they are a little "different".

Now the Ultime Franc was never designed or produced to be a circulation coin. And while here in Europe edge inscriptions are pretty normal, you would not really use the edge for important information such as the only place where the denomination can be found.

What I like about that Belgian coin - which was not just made for collectors - is that the side with the face value is not simply "cut" into three thirds, but each third goes up a little, almost like a circular ramp, until the next third is reached. Whether the "three thirds" design should have been applied to the royal portrait too, weeeelll ...

(*) Speaking about 1999, we could certainly add this wonderful design, used for the common €2 commem issued ten years later, hehe. This one was even the result of a public vote.



Christian

 

I thought Europeans (even Germans! just kidding, lol) had better taste than that.

 

Ah, I certainly did not vote for that one. The artist Georgios Stamatopoulos, who also designed all the Greek euro circulation coins, and most other recent coins from Greece, designed it. During the vote, people could pick one of several (five AFAIR) designs; the names and nationalities of the artists were not published at that stage. But while the vote was still open, a campaign started in several Greek forums, to vote for this design because it was done by a Greek. Whether this influenced the result, I don't know. Stamatopoulos has certainly done quite a few great designs, but this one, meh. Fairly poor design, and in my opinion it does not even convey the intended message ...

Christian

 

I'm glad you didn't vote for it! That one makes the 50 Jahre Deutches Fernsehen coin look good. (Although I didn't think the TV coin was that bad....)