Map - Relative Values Of Every Country's Most-Valued Coins

Here's a map I've spent a bit of time putting together.


I was wondering, "why do Americans not use their dollar coin?". So I thought it would be interesting to make a map of how valuable the world's most valuable circulating coins are, to see if any trends are detectable, and to see if the Americans should feel obligated to change. For instance, Japan's highest-valued coin is 500 yen, worth about $5 U.S., so on this map it's shaded bright red.

Blue countries should be treated cautiously - it seems very likely that in any country shaded bright blue, there are no coins in circulation because they are worthless and have all been melted down by enterprising citizens. But if the government hasn't officially recalled the coins, we can pretend that they still circulate there.

Gray means that there are no officially issued coins at all, or that the situation in that country is quite turbulent/obscure and it's difficult to find up-to-date information.

There are some patterns:

- Asia is quite coin-poor, with the exceptions of the highly-developed Tigers.
- Western Europe is clearly the part of the world with the most valuable coins.
- Africa isn't as bad as you'd think. Some countries have no coins (or no governments), but the CFA unions have a good, stable currency.
- South America is quite interesting because of the constant inflation going on there - at some point, all of these countries would have been shaded red. The best performer is Peru (the bright red is just French Guiana, a far-flung state of France - yes it's weird).
- Again, until quite recently, Russia and others would have been shaded red. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

I have shaded foreign users of the U.S. dollar in red. Why? In Panama and Ecuador, locally-issued coins circulate that have a value greater than $0.25, and I've heard that the Sacagawea dollar is very popular throughout Central and South America. Let me know if you have any recent direct experience that I can use for updates.

I hope this is interesting!

[dollarcoinadvocacy]Hey Americans - even most of Africa has you beat. Start using those dollar coins![/dollarcoinadvocacy]