Euro Set I Received About 20 Years Ago

I was doing some organizing today, and I came across my "First Official Issue of the Euro Coins" set and spent a bit of time looking at it again. We happened to be living in the Netherlands when the Euro was introduced, and sometime in 2002 my wife (who has zero interest in coin collecting) saw this set in the window of a shop in Den Haag and bought it for me as a present. This is the only coin purchase she's ever made in our 42 years of marriage, but I really like it.

It came in a custom Lighthouse binder, and the coins from the first 12 members of the EU were put in matching hard cases. The dates on these coins vary from 1999 to 2002, as some countries used the strike date on the coins, while others minted them all with the date of the transition to the Euro (2002):



The dealer asked her if she wanted to include the sets from the 3 other countries that adopted the Euro, but were not EU members, and she thankfully said yes. The Vatican and San Marino sets are the official mint sets of 2002. The Monaco set is in 2x2 holders:


After she gave me the set, I decided to add the "First Euro Stamp" set to sort of complete it:


I don't really collect foreign coins or stamps (though I have an accumulation of both) but this is a keepsake I'll be hanging on to and passing on to one of my grandkids someday.