Polish coin world's most beautiful

A Polish coin depicting prized jazz musician Krzystof Komeda has been chosen as the most beautiful coin in the world. It was awarded the 2011 “International Prize Vicenza Numismatica,” by the jury at the seventh edition of the famed competition in Italy.

According to the official website, the prize is assigned to the most beautiful minted coin based on an assessment by the jury of its aesthetics and the message it conveys.

Designed by Roussanka Nowakowska, the coin was produced by the Mint of Poland on behalf of the National Bank of Poland. The coin, which is part of the “History of Popular Polish Music” series, was singled out for its “romantic depiction of the pianist,” according to a statement on the Mint of Poland's website.

The winners will be officially announced and presented with their awards on October 31 during the Vicenza Numismatica fair in Vicenza, where the featured coins will also be on display. The two other prizes at the festival include the coin with the best architectonic representation, and the artist with the most distinguished career in drawing coins, medals and sketches.

Posted by andrew, August 12, 2011. Post has 0 comments.
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Photo of the day

Posted by andrew, April 22, 2011. Post has 0 comments.
banknotes cat coin fun

50 years

Yuri Gagarin - was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961.

A postcard with an image of Yuri Gagarin

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Posted by andrew, April 12, 2011. Post has 0 comments.
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Guess snail size

Posted by andrew, March 30, 2011. Post has 0 comments.
coin riddle snail

Student discovers 50 pence piece dated 2011 in her change

It's a find that could earn a student a mint - a 50 pence piece with next year's date on. Sarah Legg was handed the coin in her change after paying for lunch at her college and noticed an unusual design.

The silver coin features one of 29 designs by members of the public created for the Royal Mint ahead of the 2012 Olympics.

Now the 17-year-old forensic science student hopes to sell it to coin collectors to help pay her university fees after she leaves Fareham College in Hampshire.

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Posted by andrew, December 17, 2010. Post has 2 comments.
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Why do we collect banknotes?

Here is an opinion of the one banknote collector on the blog.realbanknotes.com:

"My name is om007 and from time to time i will contribute to this very interesting blog... I once found a Roman coin in the wild and i must admit it was quite a thrill but i do find coins quite limiting in terms of size, colors, motifs, information.

Here is a picture with my biggest (Russia 1912), a current 10 Swiss Francs and my smallest banknote (Morocco 1944). I must have all the sizes in between."

"Every note is full of faces or historical places, celebrities or weird symbol. As Proteus does for each note, there is always a lot to search and discover in the fine prints, small differences, historical references. The materials used are also quite different... From rough cardboard to polymer and all the changing quality of papers... From one-sided to multi-layer security and hologram. A lot of banknotes also have been used to doodle, write, annotate or share info with the next person to receive it... All this makes the Banknotes collection much more appealing to me than a pure Coin collection..."

Original was posted on blog.realbanknotes.com.

Posted by andrew, November 11, 2010. Post has 2 comments.
banknote coin francs Morocco Roman rubles Russia Switzerland

Coin Collecting Pays

This striking coin is actually struck with the wrong date. The $10 gold Eagle coin is stamped 1804 but was created in 1834 as a gift from Andrew Jackson. The coin has proved its value many times over. In 2001 it sold for a paltry million dollars, then two years later, it was declared for $2.4 million by a buyer.

There are only four of these coins in the word. Proving again that collecting coins continues to be a popular hobby that often starts when a parent or grandparent gives a special coin as a gift to a child or grandchild.

Posted by andrew, November 9, 2010. Post has 0 comments.
coin dollars United States

Use of 10 Syrian pound coins in Norway

The shape of the 10 Syrian pound coin has been found to so resemble the 20 Norwegian krone coin that it can fool vending machines, coins-to-cash machines, arcade machines, and any other coin-operated, automated service machine in the country. While hardly similar to the naked eye, machines are unable to tell the coins apart due to an almost identical weight and size:

Ten Syrian pounds converts to ~1 Norwegian kroner, or about 0.20 United States dollar. 20 NOK, on the other hand, converts to 3.70 USD, almost ~18 times the value of the Syrian coin. While not easy to find in Norway, the Syrian coins are still used in automated machines there with such frequency that the Norwegian postal service decided to close many of their coins-to-cash machines on February 18, 2006, with plans to develop a system able to differentiate between the two coins.

By the way, in the summer of 2005, one Norwegian man was sentenced to 30 days, suspended, for having used Syrian coins in arcade machines in the municipality of Bærum.

Posted by andrew, August 3, 2010. Post has 0 comments.
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Guess size of frog

Other riddles:

• Guess real esate price;
• Guess dog size.

Posted by andrew, July 29, 2010. Post has 3 comments.
coin riddle

Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar (Roman military and political leader who played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire) was the first to print his own bust on a Roman minted coin:

BTW. The Roman currency during most of the Roman Republic and the western half of the Roman Empire consisted of coins including the aureus (gold), the denarius (silver), the sestertius (bronze), the dupondius (bronze), and the as (copper). These were used from the middle of the third century BC until the middle of the third century A.D.

Posted by serge, March 17, 2010. Post has 0 comments.
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