Happy 2024!

[Angus]

2023 comes to a close with 256-259 different coins issued (not sure if 5c, 10c and 20c from Estonia will actually emerge).

2024 starts with no new euro countries (Bulgaria postponed to 2025) but France producing new 10c, 20c and 50c designs.  At some point this year the total number of different coins will exceed 5000 (including official differences in mintmarks etc.).

[Offa]

Happy new year from Liverpool

[Figleaf]

Those statistics are murderous for collecting euro coins as a hobby. The first date on euro coins was 1999, so we are entering its 25th year and approaching 5000 new issues. That's not just an average of 200 new issues a year, the trend is up, as last year's total shows.

I am guessing, but it is likely that the vast majority of last year's say 256 new issues did not circulate. Those issues cannot be taken from circulation and they sell well above par. Those alone may account for some €3000 plus shipping plus dealer fees if the collector wants to keep up with this coin diarrhoea.

It's worse. Past experience with over-issuing non-circulating pseudo-coins (e.g. Israel, Austria, the GDR, Poland) show that when collectors can't or won't keep up with the new issues, demand dries up and prices crash. It's not just that you or your inheritors get back far less than what was paid, some pieces cannot be sold at all. This is sure to happen, since neither the responsible people in Brussels, nor the responsible people in the member states will take responsibility for the inevitable crash.

It's even worse. This irresponsible attitude is not an EU monopoly. It used to be that every rock that stayed above water in a storm had pseudo-issues made in a few "private mints" (basically metal dealers who turned metal into pictures in metal because they could be sold at an idiotic agio). No longer. With advancing financial technology, demand for coins for payment is structurally decreasing. The whole world is struggling with minting overcapacity. Every minting bureaucracy is trying to survive by flogging nonsense in metal as coins: Canada was an early starter, followed by Australia, New Zealand, the UK, EU and US. Formerly dignified institutions selling their soul if need be.

It will be largely OK in the end. Minting will become an Upper Middle Income Country (UMIC) business, like textile and clothes making and shipbuilding in the past and car building today. Many bosses will take a timely cash in. Workers and the bureaucrats will find a more productive job. The get-rich-quickly crowd will turn to newer nonsense. Only the collectors will be stuck with their losses. Many will look for a more honest hobby.

Happy 2024.

Peter

[<k>]

The eurozone should have copied other monetary unions. The East Caribbean States, the Central African States, and the West African States are all monetary unions. However, their coins only have a single set of designs. Their citizens find it accordingly far easier to deal with their few coins.

Meanwhile, the citizens of the eurozone have become increasingly confused by the dizzying profusion of issues. Over the years, this confusion has led to increased frustration and anger in the many eurozone countries. This anger has had predictably negative results. Not long ago, the Catalonians tried to break away from Spain so that they might have their own money. The Parisians now have frequent riots and regularly set fires in their city. The Italians have elected a far right leader, and even the sensible Dutch are now turning to the far right politician Geert Wilders. And all because they found it hard to understand their money. The resulting confusion is causing the average IQ of the eurozone population to drop by two points every year.

The Stick Man Design.

Klaus Schwab of the WEF has now suggested a radical solution to this problem. All the existing euro coins should be recalled and melted down. There will be no more national sides. Those designs will be replaced by the stick man design of 2009. It will appear on the reverse of all the denominations. Then there will only be one set of coins for eternity. No more commemoratives or collector coins either.

The daily sight of this stick man design will calm the eurozone's troubled populations. Gradually they will become more and more like the stick man: calmer, easier to control, and more two-dimensional. Eventually they will turn into avatars, at which point Herr Schwab will upload them to the cloud as part of his Great Reset. Game over!

[augsburger]

The eurozone should have copied other monetary unions. The East Caribbean States, the Central African States, and the West African States are all monetary unions. However, their coins only have a single set of designs. Their citizens find it accordingly far easier to deal with their few coins.

Meanwhile, the citizens of the eurozone have become increasingly confused by the dizzying profusion of issues. Over the years, this confusion has led to increased frustration and anger in the many eurozone countries. This anger has had predictably negative results. Not long ago, the Catalonians tried to break away from Spain so that they might have their own money. The Parisians now have frequent riots and regularly set fires in their city. The Italians have elected a far right leader, and even the sensible Dutch are now turning to the far right politician Geert Wilders. And all because they found it hard to understand their money. The resulting confusion is causing the average IQ of the eurozone population to drop by two points every year.

The Stick Man Design.

Klaus Schwab of the WEF has now suggested a radical solution to this problem. All the existing euro coins should be recalled and melted down. There will be no more national sides. Those designs will be replaced by the stick man design of 2009. It will appear on the reverse of all the denominations. Then there will only be one set of coins for eternity. No more commemoratives or collector coins either.

The daily sight of this stick man design will calm the eurozone's troubled populations. Gradually they will become more and more like the stick man: calmer, easier to control, and more two-dimensional. Eventually they will turn into avatars, at which point Herr Schwab will upload them to the cloud as part of his Great Reset. Game over!

I half agree and half disagree. I like the different designs, but yes, the number of coins is huge. I haven't had a new Euro coin for a long time, I haven't been to the Euro zone for maybe 6 years, I'm not sure, and won't be going soon either. The commemorative coins which each had the country written on it for however many designs that look the same is ridiculous. They should just have the design, no country on it, and allow each country to make and issue.

For the normal designs, I don't think it's necessary to have one design, it adds flavour and the EU should be about different cultures together.

[FosseWay]

For me it's not the number of varieties, but whether they circulate.

Despite the coin diarrhoea mentioned by Peter, in terms of circulation-specification coins I don't think many countries have matched the 5 issues a year sustained over 20+ years that the US State Quarters program and its successors have done. But the State Quarters (and the pre-Beatrix Potter UK 50ps, the Bundesländer €2 series etc.) all circulate and contribute to keeping coins in the public eye in a positive way.

So it's not necessarily a question of minting fewer special designs, so much as only minting as many coins of whatever design as are needed for circulation, and not inventing extra commemoratives that will never see the light of day because the public need for coinage is already satisfied. You then mint proof/BU sets as a representative record of what has been put into circulation, not the other way round.

Personally the coin diarrhoea doesn't hugely bother me. My style of collecting does not oblige me to get every single issue of a given country or currency; I collect as I find. If the new Churchill £2 will only ever be in sets, I don't have a problem with the prospect of it likely never being in my collection.

I also draw a big distinction between non-circulating coins of circulation specification (like the Churchill £2) and coin-like pieces of metal that are never intended in any form to be used as currency. The latter I can dismiss even more easily and for me they form a completely different sphere of interest - one that I don't share, but that's fine - from coins.