What's your wish list for new national circulation sets?

Started by <k>, November 03, 2016, 06:42:37 PM

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Pabitra

Quote from: onecenter on January 27, 2018, 05:30:47 PMPossibly the only other nation that has kept such continuously stable designs for such a long period of time is Switzerland.

Other contenders for long period of same design for circulation coinage are South Korea and Kuwait.

<k>




Most of Ethiopia's current coins were designed by Stuart Devlin and issued in 1977.

The designs are fine in themselves, but the socialist / communist flavour is well out of date now.

Time for an update, I think.
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quaziright

Swiss coinage looks like sh*t imo. Costa Rica hasn't updated it's coin designs in decades, they all look the same. Romania had come out with a circulation set a few years ago reminiscent of former soviet republic designs of the early 1990s. Denmark's standard circulation coins are pretty banal also for the last 20 or so years

chrisild

Guess the Swiss are used to the fact that their paper money gets updated (including new designs) every couple of years while most circulation coins still have their 19c look. Well, maybe that is a statement. ;)

Romania's circulation coins are somewhat boring indeed, with plain designs. But they do have nice circulating 50 bani commems.

As for Danish coins, well, at some point Frederik will become king of Denmark, and then the designs, or at least some of them, will be changed. And again there are some neat thematic 10 and 20 kr coins in circulation.

One more thing. :)  At some point the common sides of the euro and cent circulation coins should be updated too. The only change so far has been the post-enlargement map, which made sense. These coins have a "European" and a "national" side, and again I like that. However, the twelve stars on the common sides should be arranged the way they are arranged on the European Flag. (And while we're at it, use a different font for the denomination.)

This way the country specific sides could actually be country specific, that is, the design could finally use the entire "surface" of that side. The circle of stars would be on the other side where it belongs (European side!), instead of making the area used for the country specific design even smaller. In the initial years that was not such a big issue as the twelve stars were, on several designs, arranged a little differently. But these days they are almost a corset.

Christian

<k>

Yes, good idea about the stars. However, the stars surely also allow eurozoners to easily recognise their money.

Having so many variations must be confusing for some euro-zoners.
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<k>

Quote from: quaziright on May 04, 2018, 05:36:38 AM
Swiss coinage looks like sh*t imo.

Hmm. Yes, the designs are old-fashioned, but at least there is variation in those wreaths, if you look closely, with different leaves and flowers.
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quaziright

Quote from: <k> on May 05, 2018, 05:21:12 PM
Hmm. Yes, the designs are old-fashioned, but at least there is variation in those wreaths, if you look closely, with different leaves and flowers.

I'd risk going cock-eyed... no thanks  :)

<k>

I also find the national sets of the Indian subcontinent very lame: India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh. Surely they can do better.
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Pabitra

India's attempt to get good design of circulation coins failed during 2004 to 2011.
The reasons were discussed in this forum too and need not be repeated.
Perhaps neighbouring nations learnt a lesson and have been very conservative since.

Pakistan has not designed a full series in one go for quite some time.
Bangladesh designed one in 2010 - 3 coins series - with effigy of father of the nation.
Sri Lanka is planning to issue a new series of 4 coins this year. The latest annual Report of CBSL ( released on April 26th) reiterates that commitment. It was expected by end of April 2018 but appears to have been delayed. Let us wait and see if it bring out any thing new.

The SAARC region has been quite conservative with their coins whereas new notes series have been appearing regularly. In last two years, India and Maldives had new series of notes but only Maldives changed its 2 Ruffiyaa coin.

India has been discussing new series of coins since 2014-15 and quite a few patterns ( reportedly 14 of them) have appeared in numismatics circles. We should expect new designs anytime but I do not expect to see flora and fauna on them.
Only Nepal could change their conservative approach with 2 coin series starting BS2064, on becoming republic and giving way to secular coinage and doing away with temples on the reverse. Even Thailand has done away with "Wat" series.

<k>

I do like the designs of the Maldives, which is why I recently posted a topic about them. Maybe the Maldives should invade and conquer the other countries of the region and force them to introduce good coin design.  8)

Temples - well, that's up to the countries themselves. So long as the designs are of a high standard, it doesn't matter.

No, we can't expect flora and fauna everywhere - and unfortunately not in my home country, the UK - but perhaps that would not be desirable.
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FosseWay

Quote from: <k> on January 28, 2018, 01:06:57 AMIn the UK, our oldest circulating coins are the 1p and 2p, and those minted before 1982 (1971 to 1981) still have the legend "NEW PENCE" - the only circulating coins that do so, even though they are now very old and hardly new.

You've mentioned this as a reason for updating UK coinage before, and I don't really follow. It's entirely normal (historically, even if not currently due to the exceptional length of the current reign) for the coins of several monarchs to circulate simultaneously. In the 1960s you could find pennies and halfpennies from Victoria and all subsequent monarchs in use. I don't see the logical difference between that and having old coins with "new pence" on them. In both cases they reflect the status quo at the time they were issued.

I am not in favour of binning perfectly usable coinage just because the design is out of date. Absolutely, update the design so newer examples are more relevant to the time they're issued, but there's no reason to remove the old ones if the physical specifications are still the same. The only exception I can really see is if you get a situation like the fall of the Third Reich or Soviet Union where you really don't want the old, now offensive, political imagery on the coins. But in both of those cases the currencies were either reformed (Germany) or underwent large inflation that rendered the old coins useless (Russia) so it wasn't a practical issue. You can also avoid this in advance by not having political imagery on the coins in the first place  ;)

If you completely update the entire stock of circulation coinage as soon as you deem the existing ones to be outdated in some aesthetic way, you end up with very little variety in circulation, as well. It's not a coincidence that the whole change-checking mentality and subsequent popularity of collecting increased in the 1960s and then dropped away in the 1970s and 80s. If there's a good practical reason to change (e.g. decimalisation, joining the euro or accepting the reality of inflation) then that trumps the "softer" aspects, but I don't see the point of change for its own sake.

That said, in the specific example of the UK coppers I agree with you that it is time to change, simply because they are redundant (or at least far too big). But not because they have the "wrong" design.

<k>

I think you've misunderstood me. Somebody mentioned which were the oldest coins circulating in their country. My statement was a simple response to that, though it was slightly off-topic.

You're probably thinking of the time when I suggested that all the shillings and florins should have been swiftly removed after decimalisation in the UK - I suggested a period of three years' grace. That was in order to present a uniform decimal system and avoid the potential confusion for foreigners and children. I have never said that coins showing the word "NEW" should have been withdrawn. I did suggest that they should never have used the word "NEW" in the first place, because the term had a shelf life, and that they should have used "DECIMAL" instead, as was originally planned.

I am in favour of demonetising the UK penny and 2 pence coins, but simply because they are all but worthless now - not because they carry the word "NEW".

Well, I hope that makes everything clear now, and that you won't in future feel the urge to "Daily Mail" a poor harmless numismatist such as myself.  :'(
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FosseWay

Sorry, in that case I did misunderstand you.

I think you're on stronger ground regarding the shillings and florins because they carry a completely different denomination, though I'm not sure there actually was any significant evidence that people were confused between 1968 and 1992 by their presence.

<k>

Quote from: FosseWay on May 07, 2018, 03:22:19 PM
I think you're on stronger ground regarding the shillings and florins because they carry a completely different denomination, though I'm not sure there actually was any significant evidence that people were confused between 1968 and 1992 by their presence.

Some foreign tourists were, as I know from experience. As for children, well, we had the weird claim by some post-predecimal members that they knew what a sixpence was as soon as they clapped eyes on it.  ::)  But let's not get into that again.
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<k>



The East Caribbean States has had the same ship design on its coins since the 1980s.

That dollar above has been replaced by a copper-nickel one, of course.

I do like the design, but it appears on all the coins but one.


ECS 5 cents.jpg

That one is the 5 cents coin, which features sprigs.


The 1c and 2c coins also featured sprigs.

They were demonetised some years ago, though.


Probably the members of this currency union would have trouble agreeing on any new designs.

It could be done, but perhaps they think it's safer to stick with tradition.
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