Austria 2 Schillings. Commemorative Or Not?

For me, there are two types of "commemorative coins":

1. Those which were intended to circulate, made by the millions, and were frequently found in circulation there in the country that issued them. German 2 mark coins are excellent examples of this category. They all commemorate someone, so logically they're all commemoratives. To my mind, collecting these "circulating commemoratives" would be an essential requirement for a "complete collection" of circulating coins.

2. Those which were issued only for sale to collectors (normally for much more than the face value stated on the coin) and never intended for circulation; you would only find one of these in change if someone's coin collection had been stolen and spent, or hard times came upon that country and the coins entered circulation by necessity. Most US commemoratives fall into this category, and some countries have only ever issued coins like this. For me, it's perfectly OK to not include these "non-circulating legal tender" (NCLT) coins in a collection, and still consider the collection "complete".

Another factor to consider is: banknotes. Find out what was the lowest denomination circulating banknote. If it was the same value, or lower, than the coin, then it's reasonable to assume the coins were not intended to circulate.

So, which class are these Austrian ones? The mintages vary between 7 million and 300,000 - numbers which seem to me to be way too high for NCLT, yet not quite high enough for a proper circulation coin. Certainly the first two (1928 Schubert and 1929 Billroth) I would class as circulating commemoratives. The rest, I'm not so sure. The lowest Austrian banknote at the time was 5 schillings, which would have made these coins the highest value circulating coins without a banknote equivalent.

You could always compromise, and only collect well-worn, heavily circulated examples of these coins, to "prove" they were in circulation. Much cheaper that way, too.

It would actually be very helpful if coin catalogs added some info about whether a specific piece was issued at face or not. May be tough or impossible to find out in certain cases but should be easy in others. Unfortunately the KM and the Schön do not provide such information at all.

Well, even then we still do not know whether a coin "circulated" or not. In Euroland, for example, those €2 commems that can/could be had at face value will all circulate. The collector coins (regional money) however can usually not be found in circulation, even if one can initially obtain them at face.

Most Austrian silver commems from the Second Republic were/are issued at face. Again, that does not mean they actually circulate/d. (The 20 S brass and 50 S bi-met coins did, even though the paper equivalents were somewhat more popular.) So I am inclined to believe that the 2 S silver coins from the 1920s and 30s were issued at face but not really used in circulation.

(Was that least sentence vague enough? )

Christian