The Secret Greek Euro Mintmarks

I had the opportunity to go through a bunch of nearly-uncirculated euro coins, thanks to a generous donation to a missionary group I'm involved with - whenever someone donates a coin collection to them, it's my job (as "the coin guy") to try to value it and sell it on their behalf.

In the process of going through these coins, I learned something about some little-publicised "varieties" within the Greek euro series. When making e-mail enquiries with QNS member Ben "the Euro Guy" as to what they might be worth, he said (almost as an aside) "And then of course the Greek coins come in two varieties." They do? It was the first I'd heard of it. And so the story unfolded...


Some Greek euro-coins: 1 cent/lepton (ancient trireme), 5 cents/lepta (modern supertanker), and 20 cents/lepta (John Kapodistrias).

Euro coins and notes are, theoretically, issued by the European Central Bank. In practice, it's the treasury departments of the various member-states that decide how many coins and notes should be issued, though the ECB retains the right to veto any member-state it feels is getting a little enthusiastic with the currency issue. Greece, however, was a latecomer to the euro - their economy was too "basket case" for the ECB to accept absorbing it. When approval to join the Eurozone was finally granted, only a year prior to the launch of the euro, the Greeks had a problem making their allotted quota of 1.3 billion coins.

As a result, Euro coins with Greek designs ended up being produced in several other European mints - exactly which mints were responsible was officially some kind of state secret, but according to several websites I found, the mints employed were The Royal Mint in Spain (mintmark "E") and the national mints in France (mintmark "F") and Finland (mintmark "S"). Other informants (such as Ben) suggested E for Spain, F for Stuttgart (Germany) and S for the Netherlands. Apparently the Greek mint and national bank were reluctant to admit its inability to perform this Herculean task, and ordered the supplying foreign mints to conceal the mintmarks indicating country of origin. There's certainly no mention of them on the official Hellenic Mint or Bank of Greece websites.

The marks can be tricky to spot, but for any collector of Spanish coins, the technique is familiar: they're hidden in the stars. (see QNS Magazine, #164, March 2000). There are 12 stars on the reverse of Greek euro coins, at the positions of the numbers on a clock face. For the foreign-sourced Greek euro coins, the location of the mintmark is in one of the stars closest to the date. Specifically, the mintmarks are found in the following locations:

1 and 2 euro: "S" in 6 o'clock star, separating date digits
50 eurocent: "F" in 8 o'clock star, above date
20 eurocent: "E" in 8 o'clock star ,above date
10 eurocent: "F" in 8 o'clock star, below date
5 eurocent: "F" in 2 o'clock star, above right of date
2 eurocent: "F" in 2 o'clock star, below right of date
1 eurocent: "F" in 10 o'clock star, below left of date


Mintmarked 1 cent: F in star below-left of date. Anthemion below date.

All the Greek coins, with and without the secret marks, bear the privy mark of the national Bank of Greece, a stylised anthemion flower somewhat resembling a fleur-de-lys. It can also be seen in some of the enlarged scans of the mintmark areas of Greek euro coins accompanying this article.


Mintmarked 5 cents: F in star above-right of date.

Unfortunately, while the latest (2006) Krause catalogue mentions the secret mintmarks and their relative abundances, it gives no details as to what they mean, what mints they stand for, and why they were placed there.


Mintmarked 20 cents: E in star below date. Anthemion above date. The 'Greek-GS' monogram of Georges Stamatopoulos, designer of the Greek euro coins, can also be seen below the "E" star.

These mintmarked coins may well be among the scarcer "regular issue" euro coins - that is, not counting the largely "for collectors only" euros of the Vatican City, Monaco and San Marino. While by no means "rare" (except by the ebay definition!), they still command a premium over unmarked Greek coins. According to Krause, while mintages for regular unmarked Greek euros are all over 100 million per denomination, mintages for the mintmarked coins are:

2 euro: 6 million
1 euro: 15 million
50 eurocent: 18 million
20 eurocent: 26 million
10 eurocent: 24 million
5 eurocent: 18 million
2 eurocent: 18 million
1 eurocent: 15 million

Compare this mintage with that of the much more highly publicised and therefore more highly sought after 1c and 2c of Finland:

2 cent: 1999 1.8 mil, 2000 13.9 mil, 2001 .5 mil, 2002 .6 mil, 2003 6.8 mil
1 cent: 1999 8.1 mil, 2000 7.6 mil, 2001 .5 mil, 2002 .6 mil, 2003 6.8 mil.

Needless to say, I was pleased to find a whole bagful of secret-mintmarked Greek euro coins in my hoard. Sadly, there weren't any 1 euro or 2 euro coins amongst them, so I'm still lacking one letter to complete my set of secret Greek mintmarks.

References:
E-mails with Ben
European Central Bank FAQ website
Fleur-de-Coin coin website
Krause Standard Catalog of World Coins, 33rd ed. (2006)

Edited to add: This article was first printed in the Queensland Numismatic Society Monthly Magazine, Issue #235 (February 2006)