Talk:Euro coins

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Contents 1 Where is the criticism section? 2 Tax evasion 3 Euro coin usage experience? 4 Commemorative issues 5 Legal tender euros at the Isle of Man 6 Andorra? 7 What? 8 Copper coating 9 Materials 10 Shiny coins 11 Slovenian years 12 Cyprus on new design 13 Eurocents? 14 braille? 15 New And Old Coins

[edit] Where is the criticism section?

I believe we should point out that the euro coins from the micro states are phantom-coins since the never made it to the streets! I have never seen one, or hear from anyone to have seen one. I truly believe they just coined them for selling, thus, making it a bit of a businesss. I think we should somehow point this out in the acticle. James 21 June 2006

I'd though it might be interesting to give a full overview of the euro in all its incarnations, including all national sides. These will be found in separate pages linked to in this article, since I guess that it would be too graphics-intensive to put them all on one page. I'm not entirely certain that these images are copyright-free per se. I got them from the ECB and there is no mention of copyright and no contact address that I've found. I have, however, encountered these images on other sites as well, without any copyright notice. I'm under the presumption these images are free to use in the context of Wikipedia, but please correct me, or remove them, if I am clearly mistaken. I have further taken the liberty of converting the .gifs to .pngs. I will add the national sides and the euro banknotes in the coming days. -Scipius

The euro banknotes (the real, not photo's)have a copyright symbol on them. The coins not. Only the coins have one side that is different. The banknotes are all the same. The only way to know from what country it's originaly from is looking at the first letter of the serialnumber of the note. That's the only difference. -- User:giskart

Yes, I know that, I was talking about the images themselves. I will elaborate further on the nature of the notes when I put the article up, including the country codes (there is also a printer code). I take it there won't be a problem with the copyright of the notes either. -Scipius

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There are Euro coins for Monaco, San Marino, and the Vatican. Will these also be addressed in individual articles? See http://europa.eu.int/euro/html/dossiers/00209/html/c001-5.html

I'm well aware of those countries having their own designs, but I'm still undecided on whether to add them. There are two reasons: one is that I've not been able to find images that are of the same quality as the others. The ECB does not provide images of these non-affiliated countries. The other is that these coins are extremely rare and not really meant for general circulation IMHO. Just like the older coins from these countries, the euro coins are intended largely for coin collectors, not the general public, though some may end up there. We might add those, but then we could also include the various euro coins minted for special occasions and the special large denomination (&euro 10, 20, 50 or 100, etc.) coins that are made in limited quantities, all intended for coin collectors as well of course. Naturally, anyone's free to add those, but at this moment I think it's a little too much. I'm also not certain about the copyright of the images I have seen of these coins, but that is probably not a big problem (they're everywhere). I'll probably add the three mini-states at some point (or someone else might), but let's first see how much interest there is in the 12 there are now.

I have for now added in text what is depicted on the coins of the three to satisfy any immediate curiosity ;). I've also re-instated the former list order instead of an alphabetic one. This order is not random, it is in fact alphabetic, but is instead based on the country-names in their own language (Germany is Deutschland here, Greece is Ellas, Spain España, Dutch for Nederlands, Austria Österreich and Finland is Suomi) and this is the order used by the ECB and elsewhere in European affairs (see also the tables for the euro banknotes). -Scipius

But such an unintuitive ordering shouldn't be used without some sort of explanation, so I've added one. --Zundark, Tuesday, June 11, 2002

That's a good point ;) -Scipius

So what is Ireland alphabetized as? "Eire" is out of order, and "Gaeilge", which is in order, refers to the language. -phma

Ireland is alphabetized as "Ireland". --Zundark 09:33 Sep 15, 2002 (UTC)

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See Talk:Euro for justification of using the plurals euros and cents

Roybadami

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I'm not too keen on this external link to Euro Coins that 195.34.133.60 has just put in -- they're a controversial concern in numismatic circles, as they produce what they call "proof" coins of British and Danish euros (see their main page) which they then sell off, even though they have no official standing. Technically those British and Danish euros are "fantasies". -- Arwel 01:24 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)

added: "including design exercises for the UK and Denmark" - Patrick 01:33 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow your meaning - it sounds like the design exercises are for the governments of the UK and Denmark, whe in fact they are for no-one but themselves! Arwel 01:45 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)

Okay, I made it design fantasies. - Patrick 01:58 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)

OK - I didn't realise what you'd done the first time, as I had the old page cached in my browser and I couldn't see the new version. This'll teach me to purge my caches every so often! :-) -- Arwel 02:02 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)

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"The coins were minted in several of the participating countries, using blanks produced at Birmingham Mint, Birmingham, England" -- can we have clarification of what is meant by this? As it stands, it reads as if all the euro coins of all countries were produced from blanks produced in Birmingham, which I cannot believe is true. Alternatively, just the coins of some of the ministates? It needs to be disambiguated, anyway. -- Arwel 18:52, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

• &Having done some Googling; I've qualified taht as "many". What disambiguation?Andy Mabbett 19:07, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  • I think your statement is still ambiguous. As far as I know, ALL the EU euro-using countries minted mostly their own coins, with some additional production outside their own mints (for example, I think a lot of the Netherlands coins were produced in the UK; Greek coins were produced in Finland and Spain, as well as in Greece). It's not at all clear from reading what you've added whether the blanks produced in Birmingham applies just to Monaco/San Marino/Vatican or to all the countries. If the latter case, then I think you're giving Birmingham undue prominence as blanks were produced in other places too! -- Arwel 19:25, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Tax evasion

As for Andorra, it has secured the right to mint its own national reverse from the EU since the country will join the EU tax evasion system in 2005. "tax evasion system" Is this correct? --DB

I presume it refers to a control system to counter tax evasion. If they have genuinely termed such a control system the "EU tax evasion system" that is quite confusing. zoney ♣ talk 13:16, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Euro coin usage experience?

I am curious about something and would like a resident or (former/) visitor to Europe to answer this question, perhaps also in the article. In a particular eurozone country, does one come across euro coins from all over the eurozone, or mostly from that country only? Or does the experience vary? If the latter, I would expect the Irish, Greeks, and Finns to usually come across their own countries' euros, because they are separated from the rest of the eurozone. The rest, which is contiguous, might be more conducive to euro coins migrating across national borders. Furthermore, I speculate that small countries such as Luxembourg would be more likely to have "foreign" euro coins circulating within than large countries such as Germany or France. But that's just guessing on my part. Can anyone confirm / deny? LeoO3 17:28, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

German euro coins can be found pretty much anywhere, mainly due to the fact that there's simply so many of them. Furthermore, I have encountered (here in Austria) coins from: Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain. Nightstallion 09:49, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

In Belgium (20 km from the french border),

• 50% of the coins are from Belgium,
• 15% from France,
• 15% from Germany
• 5% from Letzeburg
• 5% from Netherlands
• soldus : Italia, Spain, Greece, Austria
• very rare : Portugal, Ireland, Finland
• no coins : the micro states (Vatican, Monaco, San-Marin)

But the situation should be different in a town as Bruxelles where there are a lot of tourists from others countries.--Flafla89 14:40, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I've found on the web, a site in dutch (http://www.eurodiffusie.nl/index.php) where you can find some theory and statistics about the diffusion of euro coins in Belgium and Nederlands. Rather interessant. --Flafla89 18:15, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

In Ireland we get a lot of coins from other countries - mainly German, Spanish, French and Italian, but I've seen them all at one time or another - except for the micro states and Finland. I'd guess that about 50%-60% of coins in Ireland are Irish issue. I suppose the cause is a mixture of Irish people bringing them back from holidays and tourists from the mainland bringing them over. I remember that I got my first non-Irish coin only a few weeks after the change over - it was German. Seabhcán 11:18, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd put the percentage of Irish coins in change here at 80-90%. That means you pretty much always have foreign euro coins in your change, at about 1 in 5-10 rate. Seabhcán's estimate is wildly off - there is no way ones change is half made up of foreign euro coins. Agree with Seabhcán about having encountered coins from most Eurozone countries here in Ireland. France, Germany and Spain are probably most common, followed perhaps by Netherlands. At the beginning it was uncommon to get foreign euro coins in low denominations (even if my first was an Austrian 5 cent coin!), especially one and two cents. But especially this year, they are more common, usually Spanish for some reason.

One thing about the UK staying out is that it means there is no British monarch on coins here :) zoney ♣ talk 15:51, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

From my memory of visiting Paris, the most common foreign coins where Belgian and German. And the rest pretty much matches geographic proximity. And it is not hard to find non-French coins in any day. Perhaps that has to do with me going to those turist places. --Chochopk 22:44, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

(To Zoney) Yeah you're definitely right. Not that it's a problem really, to me, but Ireland would be absolutey saturated with British coins if they joined. I mean, before euro, you could easily get British pennies a 2p coins, even though they weren't worth the same! Oh and, about the tourist thing (from Chochopk) I would have to disagree. The places that get the most tourists, must be getting tourists from the ones that don't get many tourists. Therefore, it would work both ways. In theory, the amount of coins you leave with, should be roughly equal to the amount you come back with. Therefore (for example) someone from Ireland, would bring a higher than eurozone average of Irish euro coins to Spain. But then would bring a higher than eurozone average of Spanish euro coins back. Of course that should apply to all tourism. - ^Рэд_хот 11:59, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

• In Finland, the vast majority of coins I get are from Finland. I often get coins from 10 of the other countries as well, but the rest are a clear exception. I don't get Greek coins very often, Irish coins are so very rare that I only have seen them on a couple of occasions, and coins from the micronations are practically non-existent. JIP | Talk 08:08, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• In Portugal I find maybe 80% to be Portuguese; 10% Spanish and 10% from other countries,mainly German and French. Greek, Irish and Finnish coins are rare. 84.90.18.136 19:58, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
  • I must come to Portugal then and spread some Finnish coins around if they're that rare. JIP | Talk 07:08, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Then you will have to bring a big load of notes and coins from Finland! LOL! Due to its geographical isolation, Finnish and Greek notes and coins are so rare outside their home countries. See [1] (and there are more at Currency bill tracking). And when you come back from where ever you visit, you'll need to bring a big load of notes and coins! LOL! That'll be a fun campaign. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 11:21, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Commemorative issues

Those are horribly out of date. For a good overview, see this German site; before I start any revamping, though, I'd prefer some input. Should I remove all images of commemorative issues from the "(COUNTRY NAME) euro coins" pages and write a new "€2 commemorative issues", to be linked to from here? I prefer this over adding all commemorative issues of a given country to the respective euro coins sub-page, but I want to hear what other people have to say. ナイトスタリオン…ㇳ–ㇰ 01:32, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

• Hello, may I suggest you to have a look on the Wikipédia in french, you will find different items about the euro coins :
  • first item : the euro in circulation (normal coins) : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_%28pi%C3%A8ces_destin%C3%A9es_%C3%A0_la_circulation%29
  • second item : the 2 euros commemoratives : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_%28pi%C3%A8ces_comm%C3%A9moratives_de_2_euros%29
  • thrid item : the collections coins in euros :http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_pi%C3%A8ces_de_collection_en_euros_non_destin%C3%A9es_%C3%A0_la_circulation
  • I hope you will find all the informations you want. If not, just say it, I ll do my possible to improve theses items.--Flafla89 12:29, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the information; however, I already had all that information. I was just asking for input on how to implement it into Wikipedia. Thanks anyway, though, very well-written and -designed pages. ナイトスタリオン ㇳ–ㇰ 15:12, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Legal tender euros at the Isle of Man

The article states: However, the Isle of Man was the first to produce legal tender euros, when it minted commemorative €10 and €50 coins in 1997 and 1998. How can commemorative euro coins be legal tender before the currency was even established in 1999 and in a country where the euro is not the official currency? Nevertheless, if the statement is true, are those coins just legal tender on the Isle of Man or within the whole Eurozone? 85.124.182.40 14:44, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

• I agree with you. These coins from Isle of Man should be considered as token or fantasy coins (at least, as collection coins). If you check in the Official Journal of the Council of the European Union :
  • Isle of Man is not one of the states adopting the euro
  • the first euros coins must be issued after the 1st January 2002.

So, this part of the article should be changed !--Flafla89 18:52, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I changed it. --Jfruh 21:22, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

There were some medallic pieces struck prior to 1999 denominated in Euros, mostly from the Netherlands. Some French towns, most notably Perpignan issued their own Euro tokens for local circulation for a short period. I am not aware of any Manx medal-coins that are denominated in Euros. - (Aidan Work 02:40, 18 December 2005 (UTC))

[edit] Andorra?

Is there any information on what the design for Andorra's Euro coins will be? Will they follow the pattern of other monarchies and place the Co-Princes on the coins, despite having to change it every time a new President of France is elected? Nik42 08:13, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge - and I think I'm rather well informed on this subject, usually - there hasn't been any word on Andorra's design plans up to now. Then again, there hasn't been too much on Andorra and the euro in general, either, ever since they started their negotiations on a monetary agreement, so I've got exactly no clue regarding what point they're at right now. ナイトスタリオン ✉ 08:48, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Andorra prior to 2002 used both the French Franc & the Spanish Peseta, so it is therefore automatically a member of the Euro-zone. Andorra's coins were denominated in Diners & Cèntims, but these were not issued for circulation, & only issued to collectors. - (Aidan Work 02:37, 18 December 2005 (UTC))

[edit] What?

"It is small enough to fit almost entirely between the tips of the thumb and index finger of an average adult."

I don't get this sentence. If I stretch my fingers out, I can fit a whole apple entirely between the tips of my thumb and index finger, and I assume this coin is much smaller than that.

Or do I make a circle with the two fingers and try to fit the coin into that? That would make the coin's diameter about 5 cm for my hand, whereas the coin is actually only 16.25 mm wide. — Ливай 21:22, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Agree - it is completely meaningless. I'll take it out. --Red King 00:29, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

And if the thumb and index finger can be on different hands, then I can almost fit a cow between them... =) JIP | Talk 13:46, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copper coating

Does anyone know how thick is the copper coating on 5, 2 and 1 cent euro coins?

80.221.61.8 21:16, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Materials

Does anyone know what materials are used in each coin and how they are manufactured. For example, the small denomination "copper" coins, are they made of a "pure" copper alloy all the way through, or is the copper a coating over some other metal? What alloys are used in each coin?

[edit] Shiny coins

Hi... What is the best metal cleaner to make euro coind shiny? I've tried using Kaboom, it works for a few hours, but then it gest a strange fungus-like smudges. What's the right cleaner? — HurricaneDevon @ 21:01, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Slovenian years

Could someone tell me, what year does Slovenia traditionally put on coins, year of issue, or year of mint? - ^Рэд_хот 11:42, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

When you look at Slovenian euro coins, you can see that the coins show the year 2007. Peter Maas 17:03, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cyprus on new design

When you look on the images of new-designed coins, there you can see that there Cyprus is. It is located quite ungeographically under Crete, but it is there. Please don't revert my deleting of this sentence. Thank you. --UP3 18:45, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

You mean northeast of Crete (or upper right, if you want), not below, but yes, it will be on the new €1 and €2 coins -- but not on the 10, 20 and 50 cent coins, apparently... —Nightstallion (?) 13:30, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Cyprus is shown quite northeast of Crete on €1 and €2 new coins and south of Crete on 10, 20, and 50 cent new coins. Q43 23:00, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Eurocents?

Cents are officialy called "Eurocents". I think we should use this name here instead of "cents".

Maybe true, but in practice people use also "cents". And the website of the European Central Bank [2] also uses "cent". Peter Maas 17:07, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• not true, "cents" can have several official names in here Portugal "Cêntimos" (we only use this word, never "cents"). BTW there are many currencies in here, mostly Brazilian, US, British and former French coins that are being used as 5 or 10 cents, etc among true cents, because their similarity. I spot them. But I recently got cheated with a British coin of 1 pence (similar in size with 5 cents) and 1 US cent (similar in size with 2 euro cents). With so many national sides, one can easily be cheated. Cents aren't real money, but can make a difference in vending machines, when you don't have any more coins, and you need 5 cents, and instead of 5 cent you take from your wallet a useless British pence and the machine doesn't want it. Recently a women wanted to give me an Italian lira as if it was 2 euros! Anyone had the same problem in other member countries? Not a big problem, but happens often, at least with me. --Pedro 00:49, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] braille?

I don't have a 1-euro or 2-euro coin around so I have to ask people who live in the eurozone. Is there really braille on those 2 coins? (This is regarding a recent change) --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 10:29, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

No, this is not true. The edges are milled distinctly, but that's all. See Euro coins#Special coin features for people with impaired sight. --Red King 00:20, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Euro coins#Special coin features for people with impaired sight is exactly where that someone claims that 1 and 2 euro coins have braille. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 02:47, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Any European wikipedian can help fixing this and at Italian lira, please? --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 21:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

There is no braille on either the 1 or 2 Euro coins, at least not the front or the German backside. I suspect the person who wrote it just mistakenly called the edge markings (which also very between countries on the 2 Euro coin) "braille" -- Brazzy 12:51, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New And Old Coins

Any info whether the old coins (original design) will be withdrawn in favor of the 2007 design? It seems unlikely, but if anyone knows definitevely, let us know! Q43 23:02, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

(ECB webpage offers images of the 2007 design, but there is no press release at all!) Q43 23:03, 13 March 2007 (UTC)