Euro Pattern Sets and the 10 New EU Member States
During the past couple of years, a private mint in the UK has been producing sets of pattern Euro coins for various European countries that have NOT adopted the Euro, and which may or may not adopt it in the future.
A number of our customers have been inquiring about these sets, and so we have prepared the following list of questions and answers.
What are these coins?
In fact, these products do not contain coins at all, but rather they feature "patterns". Patterns are also sometimes referred to as prototype coins. These euro pattern sets feature the common euro obverses, while the reverse designs feature national historic personalities and sites which in the opinion of the manufacturer MIGHT appear on coins, if and when the country in question adopts the euro.
What is their status?
These are not coin sets because the "coins" are not legal tender.
Should I as a collector be trying to get these sets?
If these sets are of interest to you, by all means collect them. But you need to bear in mind that they are not legal tender and never will be.
Why does Euro Collections International not offer these sets?
In general, our customers want "the real thing". For that reason we have focused our attention on offering legal tender coins and thus have not been offering these products. Similarly when it comes to coin sets, in general we have only offered official sets. The only exceptions we have made are in cases when there has been no official product available.
Will the designs used in producing these sets ever appear on actual coins?
In our opinion it is highly unlikely that any of these actual designs would ever appear on legal tender euro coins.
In May of this year, 10 more nations* joined the European Union. As a collector what should I be collecting regarding these 10 nations?
When these 10 countries joined the EU, it was a condition of membership that eventually they would each adopt the euro is their national currency. We would advise collectors to do three things:
1) Acquire the coins from these countries which are now in circulation and which will eventually be replaced by the euro. (We have two products in stock which contain UNC quality circulating coins from these countries. The URL's are:
http://www.eurocollections.com/catalog/?category=132&product=959
http://www.eurocollections.com/catalog/?category=132&product=958
2) Stay up to date with the most important developments related to euro collecting by joining our newsletter service. You can join by adding your email address to our list. Please go to this page:
http://www.eurocollections.com/whatsnew.php
3) Acquire the euro coins in the first year they are issued. You can be certain the ECI will be the primary source for these coins in North America once they are issued.
*The names of these countries are: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Prepared September 2004
(C) Copyright Euro Collections International 2004