First Official Issue Of The One Euro Coins Of The 12 Memberstates

Well, it says it was packed by the mint in Stuttgart. https://mintbw.de/

This is one of the five German mints.

And no, they aren't the same dates, different countries had different ways of dating their coins for the Euro. Some did the date they were minted, others did the date they'd be released.

very nice set.

I suspect that the Stuttgart Mint may have obtained rolls or bags (starter kits) of coins from each country in late 2001 or early 2002. I visited France in the Fall of 2001 and got starter kits of French coins before they were released into circulation on January 1, 2002. The starter kits contained a mixture of 1999, 2000 and 2001 coins.

Regarding the finish on the coins, I travel extensively in the Eurozone and find these vary considerably. I've noticed especially that many mint-new Spanish coins look almost like proofs, with highly polished fields and frosted reliefs. On the contrary I find many German coins have an overall matt finish even when Uncirculated.

I would definitely keep the set as it is. These coins were issued in huge quantities and even in MS have only a small premium over face value, but a sealed set issued by a major European mint will always be of interest to collectors.

Although the set was produced by a euro-striking government mint, it is not an "official set" as there is no "official set" of euro coins, since each separate member-state is responsible for issuing its own sets of coins. Thus, every "one coin from every country" set out there is an "unofficial set". The Stuttgart Mint is in effect acting much like a coin dealer, in acquiring coins in bulk from other countries and assembling those coins into their own sets alongside the coins they made themselves.

That being said, because there's no such thing as an "officla set" like this, a set made by one of the actual mints is about as close as you'll get to having such an "official set". But I'd strongly suppose there was no premium on a set like this.


I suspect what you're seeing here is simply the difference in production methods and philosophies between the different national mints that are producing euro coins. SOme prefer highly polished finish, some prefer a more matte-like finish.


The situation here with the "pre-dated euros" is more complex than that. Essentially, what you're seeing here is the result of different national laws within the European Union. Five of the twelve countries - the ones named above, namely France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Finland, all have laws (or at least a strong cultural expectation) requiring that coins bear the date they were actually struck, not some hypothetical future-release date.

Once the decision to launch the euro was finalized and the euro was launched as a "virtual" or "electronic-only" currency in 1999, every country knew they needed to mass-produce euro coins for a few years leading up to 1 January 2002, in order to have enough coins in the stockpile to supply the economy for the transition period after the launch of the physical currency on January 1 2002. Some countries could "lie" about when their euro coins were made, but those five countries were unable to do so.

In other words, a large proportion of the coins dated "2002" from the other seven countries would have actually been struck in 1999, 2000 or 2001. Which is of course why that date is still by far the most common date you find in change for many of those countries.

Greece is a special case, as it is the only one of the "founding 12" to not have been an original signatory of the 1992 Maastricht treaty establishing the Euro - Greece did not join the euro until 2001, when the Euro was still only a virtual currency. But this meant that Greece only had one year to produce it's quota of coins, rather than the 3 years everybody else had, which is why a large proportion of Greece's opening coinage was struck outside of Greece, hence the various mintmarks found on 2002 Greek coins.