I'm interested here to make a list of respectable coin-issuing countries that have issued one-off sets. I am not interested in those territories such as Gough Island, where nobody lives, or Pitcairn, which is inhabited but uses the New Zealand dollar and not the sets of Pitcairn collector coins that have been issued in recent years and masquerade as circulation sets. I am interested only in countries and territories that also have, or have had, their own circulation coins.
I will divide these countries/territories into two groups:
1] Those countries with circulation coins that have issued sets of "circulation-like" coins over a period of years, not just one year, that are completely different in design from their actual circulation sets. Two countries I can name straightaway in this regard are Belize and Guyana. Can anyone name any more? Old hands will remember the collector sets that the Franklin Mint produced on their behalf in the 1970s and 1980s. The Franklin Mint did in fact design the actual circulation coins of Papua New Guinea and Trinidad and Tobago.
In the case of T&T, the FM also produced a special set in 1982 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of independence. This sets contained 1, 5 and 10 cent pieces with different designs from the standard circulation coins, and some editions of this set came in silver. A similar set, without the 10th anniversary legend, was produced in 1983 and 1984. I do not believe that ANY of the coins mentioned in this category 1] ever circulated, as the sets were simply money-spinners, aimed at collectors.
I know that in the same period the FM produced proof sets for Panama, of what looked like circulation coins. I have always wondered whether they were proof versions of their actual circulation coins, as Panama is a hazy subject for me.
2] Those countries that produced a one-off set of "circulation-like" coins, in one year only. Examples of this are the silver Waitangi commemoration set that New Zealand produced in 1990. The sets came both in silver and standard metals, and their reverse designs were entirely different from the standard circulation designs. Again, I do not believe that any of these coins circulated.
Another set that comes to mind is the Canadian Confederation Centennial set of 1967. This is a set I own, but I do not know whether any of these pieces circulated.
Another set I own is the Hong Kong set of 1997, that was produced with special designs to commemorate the handover of Hong Kong to China, after being a British colony for so long. Again, I do not know whether any of those pieces actually circulated. I recall that Macau also produced one or maybe two one-off year sets in the late 1990s, but I have no data on this, nor do I know whether Macau still uses a separate currency from the People's Republic of China. Can anybody think of any more such sets from any other countries or territories?
A grey area is Gibraltar, which produced a new set of actual circulation designs in 2004, to commemorate the 300th anniversary of being British. The following year, it reused these designs but switched them to different denominations, a gimmick I have never seen done before.
Then there are situations where some but not all of the denominations are given a different or commemorative one-off design. An example of this is the 3 Bicentennial coins issued by the US in 1976. Do our American members know if any of these circulated?
