South Korea Aims to Become Coinless by 2020

[chrisild]

It is same situation as Netherlands and Belgium have stopped minting 1  and 2 Euro cents but Germany has 5 mints producing the same denominations  in sufficient quantity to meet the demand in neighbouring countries, whatever is left of it.

Mix of "necessity" and "prestige", I think.   Of course there is absolutely no need for five mint locations in Germany, but keep in mind that it is not the feds that run them. Mints here are operated by different states. Sure, the federal government could one day say "we do not order coins from (say) the Bavarian state mint any more", but that would certainly not make the government in Munich happy ...

So the policy seems to be that each of the five - and that includes two in the very same state - can continue to make euro coins, provided they are "somehow" (making medals, or coins for other issuers) profitable. And of course a coinless Germany is not anywhere on the horizon. Rant on: Deutsche Post's offices used to have stamp vending machines that you could use with a chipknip type card. That Geldkarte is not really used much any more in DE, so what did they do? Make the machines "cash only" - and the change is given in stamps.

Netherlands was actively thinking of closing down its mint. On the other hand, Belgium mint may never be closed even if it has no orders in hand.

This is called the phenomenon of "coinless" mint.😜

Hehe ... maybe in such cases the "prestige" aspect has some more weight. Three weeks ago I read an article according to which the Dutch government plans to sell the KNM. Not sure whether that has changed, but again I do not think the country will be without coins in the foreseeable future.

Christian

[Verify-12]

Isn't South Korea's issue also about the minting cost per coin, in addition to the overall low value of the denominations?   

The cost to produce the 10 won coin is still well over face value of the coin, if all costs (manufacture and transportation) are figured into the calculations.   And that's even after switching to copper-coated aluminum in a much-smaller diameter planchet.

It is very true that they haven't minted anything higher than 500 Won for circulation.  And the introduction of the 500 Won coin (in 1982) was a big deal, with lots of fears that making the 500 Won a coin would "cheapen" that particular denomination.   I think this is still the case with the BOK refusing to mint any higher-denomination coins today.

It seems that the BOK is very wary of possible perceptions of inflation with their currency policies.

[Pabitra]

Are you from South Korea?
They still produce 1 and 5 Won in the set.
Coins of 10 Won is also practically unusable but these are produced because of statutory requirements.
Thailand still produces a large number of smaller denomination coins because of that reason.

All over the world such rules exist.
Finland mints 1 and 2 Eurocoins in the set although they have never been issued in circulation.

Issue of coins do not have any impact on inflation or corruption.
On the other hand, non issue of coins in countries with active mints means that the Govt. anticipates inflation rates higher than 12 percent. See Pakistan, Iran, Venezuela etc.

[KennyisaG]

Korean coins are ridiculous. I have a buddy who is going back to Korea during the summer, and he agreed to take back about 150000W, all in coins. And 105000W of these coins are the current 100W coins, and the bag is absolutely heavy for coins worth less than 10c! Also about 12000W of these coins are the old designs from 100W to 1W.