In the US there is Krause's COTY contest - in Russia there is WaterMark's Coin Constellation: a contest where a jury picks the "best" coins of the last year, accompanied by a People's Choice category where the general public can vote. Here are this year's winners: http://www.gold10.ru/eng/about/coin-constellation/ Both Krause and Water Mark focus on surcharged collector coins; these pieces are not what anybody might find in cash registers or pockets. But it may be interesting to see what the producers can do these days. And here you can find the submitted coins: http://www.gold10.ru/eng/about/coin-constellation/competitive-coins-2016/ I like the Money Frog "from" Niue. Like in the sense of, would not buy one, but find it amusing. Image from the contest website. Kiss me, and I will turn into Uncle Scrooge ... Christian
I like the non-colorized coins from Eastern Europe the best. I would like the Australian pieces more if they weren't required to have Winston Churchill on the obverse. Too bad all of these former British colonies have to have only one sided coins. I have found every depiction of Liz II to be obnoxious save for the first one.
Of the winners/runners up, I liked the Finnish sisu coin and the Armenian genocide coin (too bad it's so expensive!). I thought Italy had a really strong group. Many of them I found too gimmicky to like. (I'm looking at you, Tuvalu, Niue, Palau, and Cook Islands... although there are others. Canada, you're on notice.)
