Canada Commemorates 100 Years of Theory of Relativity with An Expensive Coin

[Bimat]

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity completes 100 years this year. So The Royal Canadian Mint, which tries to make money with any event they see, has decided to issue a silver collector $100 coin. The coin weighs whooping 10 Oz (311.5g, 76.25mm) and has a ridiculous price tag of CAD 899.95. Only 1500 coins have been struck and according to RCM, 83% of them have already been sold as on today! Grab your copy today before it becomes a rarity!

At today's silver price, the 10 Oz silver is worth only USD 145.5 or CAD 193.2. You can think how good this investment is...

Aditya

[Figleaf]

Einstein might have found the pricing relatively steep and the relation between the theory and Canada relatively tenuous, while his portrait is taking much place, relative to his theory, which was supposed to be the object of the exercise. I find it relatively easy to ignore this thing.

Peter

[dheer]

Its relative, there may be more coin like this or not ... it may become rare or not ... the price maybe high as they may have had to pay royalty to use the image of Einstein .

[Bimat]

Its relative, there may be more coin like this or not ... it may become rare or not ... the price maybe high as they may have had to pay royalty to use the image of Einstein .

Hi Dheer,

This is not first time that Canadian Mint is selling a coin for ridiculous price tag. Almost each and every coin they make is notoriously priced, irrespective of metal content or the theme. They practically produce few hundred collector coins every year! I agree that it's upto them to decide the price for which they want to sell it, but they also misguide buyers (like MdP) by saying 'lower the mintage, the rarer the coin'!

I just googled if there's any patent for use of Einstein's portrait and apparently there isn't any. Even if there is, I don't think their pricing is justified...

Aditya

[dheer]

I just googled if there's any patent for use of Einstein's portrait and apparently there isn't any. Even if there is, I don't think their pricing is justified...

Aditya

Its
http://www.albert-einstein.org/archives13.html

[Manzikert]

That can only refer to images which are in the Einstein archives. They cannot claim to control all images of Einstein ever taken, copyright of which in general will belong to the photographer (or original publisher if the photographer worked for a newspaper or similar publication), even if copies of these are in the Einstein archive.

Alan