Anyway, directed to any other referees of modern nations; does anyone else get absolutely infuriated at the seemingly endless stream of commemorative coins of meaningless rubbish that they make for seemingly no reason other than to serve as a cash cow?
I mean, I'm finishing up on the Ivory Coast series of 'Wonders of the Ancient World', then I find out there's a silver version of the seven coins of the gold series. Then after that I find out there's a sequel of another 7 called 'Wonders of the Modern World'. Then I find out there are silver versions of those too. Then I find out about Piedfort versions of the first series. That's at least 35 coins now. Wouldn't be too bad if I didn't have to trawl through google images for hours trying to verify the existence of coins that might not even exist.
In short, I am going to have some strong words for the Director of the Ivory Coast mint if I ever find out who they are.
'does anyone else get absolutely infuriated at the seemingly endless stream of commemorative coins of meaningless rubbish that they make for seemingly no reason other than to serve as a cash cow?'
Absolutely yes. Some of my countries (Palau, Tokelau, Britishi Virgin Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Nauru) mint loads of sh*t. For instance, few months ago I added almost 80 coins from the 'Wonders of the World' series from Palau...
I'm not a referee, but I pity whoever has to sift through Canada's 150th Celebration coins. They're putting out 150 "different" coins for the event, but most are just slight variations on other coins.
There are quite a few countries like that. Canada and Niue are definitely among the worst offenders, but others are not far behind.
Australia, with dozens of commemoratives and multiple lines of bullion coins issued every year. The "Letters of the English Alphabet" series comes to mind, with 52 coins (26 base metal and another 26 silver). What's next, numbers from 1 to 10000?
China, P.R. - well past KM#2000
Russia, too, over 1500 coins in less than 30 years; 250 just in the last couple years which don't even have a KM# yet
I searched the "A" countries in the catalogue and compared total coin numbers with total minus non-circulating. These figures are, of course, not statistics, but they are a very good indicator of the situation. Note that if we did the same search by excluding pre-1970 coins, some countries would look much worse (Austria, for example). I didn't include countries such as the Azores which have stopped coining in ... 1910.
→ Afghanistan 270 / 238 (that's 270 total coins vs. 238 circulating, so 32 non-circulating)
→ Albania 106 / 69
→ Algeria 112 / 104
→ American Samoa 11 / 0
→ Andorra 191 / 10
→ Angola 115 / 107
→ Anguilla 17 / 6
→ Argentina 198 / 144
→ Aruba 60 / 11
→ Ascension 63 / 0
→ Australia 1238 / 170
→ Austria 430 / 97
→ Azerbaijan 29 / 15
...
Some more countries:
→ British Virgin Islands 299 / 0 (they use the US dollar!)
→ Canada 1603 / 254
→ Gibraltar 541 / 135
→ Isle of Man 800 / 194
→ Niue 439 / 0 (they use the NZ dollar!)
→ Palau 303 / 0 (they use the US dollar!)
→ Tuvalu 259 / 14
New Zealand is not too bad for commemoratives compared to other countries, we only have a handful a year. But even that is too much. It really diminishes the importance of issuing a commemorative coin. When you pump them out for any old thing, when you finally get something that's worth celebrating (like the 100th anniversary of the formation of the ANZAC we had in 2015) it's lost among the rest of the meaningless commemoratives
Quote: "CassTaylor" I mean, I'm finishing up on the Ivory Coast series of 'Wonders of the Ancient World', then I find out there's a silver version of the seven coins of the gold series. Then after that I find out there's a sequel of another 7 called 'Wonders of the Modern World'. Then I find out there are silver versions of those too. Then I find out about Piedfort versions of the first series. That's at least 35 coins now.
That is one of the things that I hate the most for commems. You would think that there aren't enough Mickey Mouse enthusiasts to want to buy 1 oz silver, 1/4 oz gold, 1/2 gold, and 1 oz gold coins of exactly the same design, and there are already dozens of designs in the series, and more coming out as we speak.
Quote: "neilithic"New Zealand is not too bad for commemoratives compared to other countries, we only have a handful a year. But even that is too much. It really diminishes the importance of issuing a commemorative coin. When you pump them out for any old thing, when you finally get something that's worth celebrating (like the 100th anniversary of the formation of the ANZAC we had in 2015) it's lost among the rest of the meaningless commemoratives
I was looking at Canada's series honouring the soldiers of WWI, and the Mint suggested that I might also like a silver proof Bugs Bunny. I mean, yeah he's hilarious and looks great in a skirt, but I wouldn't exactly put him in the same zone as WWI veterans.
If I'm going to be very honest the fact that it exists doesn't make me think less of the work they did in the WWI series. If someone loves Bugs Bunny enough for it then sure, why not? Doesn't make me roll my eyes any less when I get the tenth "MINT FIRST" notice in a week. :P
Quote: "jokinen"That's why I only referee for countries that ceased to exist at least 150 years ago. And I love to research the old medieval monetary systems!
That could be even worse though, as some medieval coinages are barely documented, right?
Quote: "SteveV"Not a referee, but here's some more "offenders":
B.V.I
Alderney
Gibraltar
Belarus
Canada
Falkland Is
Fiji
Somalia
Niue
San Marino
I will defend Belarus and San Marino here. Most of the coins produced by Belarus at least has some connection to the Belarus itself. San Marino mints max 10 commemorative coins a year and they are all connected to either San Marino or Italy. To be precise, there is one silver coin added to the divisionale set, two or three more silver commemorative coins, one or two 2 euro commemorative coins and few golden ones. That's not that much. Take Russia 10 rouble or Poland 2 zlote commemoratives - it's a trash! They produced few hundreds of types of those.
Quote: "jokinen"That's why I only referee for countries that ceased to exist at least 150 years ago. And I love to research the old medieval monetary systems!
That could be even worse though, as some medieval coinages are barely documented, right?
Indeed, shaky sources and multiple contradicting theories do add to the joy of trying to reconstruct the purpose of all those old artefacts. It's like a journey. Along the way new ideas pop up.
Agreed ! I hate all that crap just designed to make money with collectors.
A suggestion to deal with some of the problem of entering all variants in Numista mentionned above by CassTaylor might be to have the possibility to load only once series for different metals.
Maybe allow "Silver or Gold or Platinium" in the metal field ?? and duplicate the lines in the date lines so that we can put ours in the right place.
If we did that it would totally screw up the statistics Numista keeps on metal content and value. I would not support this. It would interfere with searches. We would not be taken seriously as a website by anyone not a novice.
Library Media Specialist, columnist, collector, and gardener...
Quote: "SteveV"Not a referee, but here's some more "offenders":
B.V.I
Alderney
Gibraltar
Belarus
Canada
Falkland Is
Fiji
Somalia
Niue
San Marino
I will defend Belarus and San Marino here. Most of the coins produced by Belarus at least has some connection to the Belarus itself. San Marino mints max 10 commemorative coins a year and they are all connected to either San Marino or Italy. To be precise, there is one silver coin added to the divisionale set, two or three more silver commemorative coins, one or two 2 euro commemorative coins and few golden ones. That's not that much. Take Russia 10 rouble or Poland 2 zlote commemoratives - it's a trash! They produced few hundreds of types of those.
what I've seen of Gibraltars is the same too though. There is a great deal of history in Gib and Britain so their commemoratives are linked but to me that doesn't make them any more pointless ! I have however just bought an admiral Collingwood Gibraltar crown because he was from my area in England and there is a statue of him across the river to myself.
You'd love Sweden then! When I search for "Circulating commemorative coin" and "Non-circulating coins". In total it finds 76 coins, ranging from 1610 to 2013. That's 1 each 5.36 years. I reckon that's pretty acceptable.
