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Message:: [QUOTE="sonlarson, post: 2410726, member: 15488"]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. [ATTACH=full]498189[/ATTACH] COMMON REVERSE [ATTACH=full]498190[/ATTACH]ANDORRA 2015 [ATTACH=full]498191[/ATTACH] AUSTRIA 1999 [ATTACH=full]498192[/ATTACH] BELGIUM 1999 [ATTACH=full]498193[/ATTACH] CYPRUS 2008 More to come...[/QUOTE]

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