Saturday, November 19, 2011

World Coin News Blog

There is a blog that I like to check out frequently, at least once a week. World Coin News, run by David Rivera of Spain, has been running since 2006 posting about new world coins as they are released, found, or otherwise announced. Posts are usually accompanied by a photo or other picture of the coin (or coins), and sometimes even a picture of what the coin represents (such as a landmark, building, or person). Some posts are about a country redesigning one or all of their coins. Others are for commemorative versions of existing coins (a coin celebrating an important date, person, place, battle, invention, etc.). New posts generally come every couple of days, and are tagged with labels to allow similar posts to be grouped together (such as by country, year, or type) using the links at the bottom of the page. You can view all the previous entries, going all the way back to September 2006.  World Coin News is an easy way to keep up-to-date on new world coins without needing to manually go check all the different world mint Web sites. I appreciate the work that David and his contributors do to provide all that information in one place.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Australia's $50 Million Coin

In October 2011, Australia's Perth Mint unveiled a project that they had spent the last 18 months creating - a coin more than 30 inches (80 cm) across, 4 inches (12 cm) thick, weighing over 2200 pounds (1000 kg) and made of solid gold.  The coin has a denomination (value printed on the coin) of $1,000,000 Australian dollars, but the gold in the coin itself is worth more than $50 million (US dollars) at today's gold prices.


The coin was cast - melted gold was poured into a mold - rather than the normal process of mass-creating  coins (stamping the design onto a plain metal disc, called striking).


News articles say that this is now the largest gold coin in the world, and is 10 times larger (by weight) than the previous record holders.


The Perth Mint has a Web site at 1tonnegoldcoin.com with a video of how the coin was made (also embedded below) and pictures, but surprisingly little other information about the coin or why it was made.  There are many news articles about the coin, such as:

Don't think about trying to get this coin for your collection.  I don't think Australia's going to want to let this coin out of its sight.  And I can guarantee that there isn't a coin flip big enough to properly store this giant.