Nalaberong's Weekly Coin Buys

As per usual, very nice! I do appreciate your regular purchase sharing. Living vicariously, of course.

Very nice!

I can get used to this. Keep them coming.

Nice lookin coins.

Recently one of my relatives brought some Euros back from a trip to Austria. Well, that was very nice! So here's everything.

The only non-Euro in the lot, a poor abused Swiss coin.

Before we go further... all Euros look pretty much the same on one side. So I'm not bothering with photographing both sides of every Euro here. Just scroll back up here when you want to see the common side again.

First, a long-sought-after commemorative. Austria has issued one national commemorative 2-eurocoin (compared to "common commemoratives" which we'll see later), in 2005. What was the occasion? The 50th anniversary of the Austrian State Treaty, ending the Allied occupation of Austria (which had been divided into chunks, between the U.S., the U.K., the U.S.S.R., and France). Germany was not nearly as lucky - the Soviets held onto their occupation zone, set up a communist regime and kept it apart from the rest as the Democratic Republic of Germany until 1989. So why'd they let Austria go? Austria pledged neutrality and didn't join NATO or the Warsaw Pact, making it unaffiliated between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. Now that Austria is an E.U. member its neutrality is questionable - but it remains outside NATO to this day.

A German commemorative eurocoin. The German commemoratives are completely systematic, featuring a different Bundesländer (state) and some exceptional architecture from that state every year. In 2007, it was the (formerly East German) state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, featuring Schwerin Palace. They all look quite nice, but since there are 5 different mint-marks to collect, that adds up to 10 Euro out of your pocket for every one of the 16 German states, meaning the complete series will run you 160 Euro in total once it wraps up in 2021. Ouch!!

Here is a "common commemorative". All members of the Eurozone were required to mint coins to this design, with their country's name at the top. So far there have been three such designs. This one commemorates the 10th anniversary of the usage of physical Euro cash. But they are not all exactly the same - in Luxembourg, all coins are required by law to feature the Grand Duke's portrait, but how do you portray both of these required designs on one side? Simple - replace the central globe with a lateral image that shows either his head in profile OR the Euro-sign depending on how you tilt it. Quite a creative solution, but sadly I don't yet have one of these.

Slovenia has joined the Eurozone since the last time I visited Europe. So this is a coin I have never seen before.

It's the same story with Slovakia - here are both 1 and 2 euro coins from Slovakia. Everybody confuses Slovakia and Slovenia - they even have similar flags. Here's a guide to telling them apart:
http://www.slovak-republic.org/slovenia/

Finally, ten different 1-euro coins.

And eight different 2-euro coins.

This was a big help to my Euro collection, especially for free.

It's too small to grade :(

Here's yesterday's $26.90 buy. Mostly it was just shiny silver coins:



BUT there were also some world coins for 50 cents.


I've been looking for a Churchill crown for a while, it's one of those "essential" world coins. It's about Eisenhower-sized and it's worth 5 shillings... or a quarter of a pound... or 25p.

Here's a shiny British South Africa half-penny.

And a coin from British East Africa, too. I think they were trying to get all four cardinal directions.

Here's a holed 1939 Royal Visit souvenir medallion to be nailed to my board.

And - another bank token! This one's a very worn Bank of Montreal half-penny for use in Lower Canada.

I've said it before but thanks for posting these beauties. It's just awesome to see these fine specimens!

Very nice!