The Latvian central bank has just published the designs of the country's future euro coins. Those who are familiar with Latvia's past and present coins will be familiar with most or all themes.

Note that the designs show the year 2008. That is not necessarily when the country joins the currency union - could well be later - but of course they wanted to put some date on the pieces. In my opinion they are OK, and the €1 and €2 designs are nice. What I find a little odd is that they have two different versions of the country name, "long" on the €1 piece and "short" on all others including the €2 piece. Oh well.

Some information in English is here ...
http://www.bank.lv/eng/main/sapinfo/coin_genesis/
... and these are the designs:

2 euro: Freedom Monument

Large picture (300K): http://www.bank.lv/images/img_lb/sapinfo/l...tade/2_Euro.JPG

1 euro: Latvian Maiden

Large picture (360K): http://www.bank.lv/images/img_lb/sapinfo/l...tade/1_Euro.JPG

10-20-50 cent: Coat of Arms (large version)

Large picture (380K): http://www.bank.lv/images/img_lb/sapinfo/l...20_10_cents.JPG

1-2-5 cent: Coat of Arms (small version)

Large picture (300K): http://www.bank.lv/images/img_lb/sapinfo/l...5_2_1_centi.jpg

Christian

Nice designs. I can't wait.

hey, these are some of the better euro coin designs!

I like how one of the three stars of the freedom monument on the €2 is used as on of the 12 stars of the EU in the outer ring.

And shields of coat of arm on a coin is always good OK

Basically that is a neat idea, agreed. What I do not particularly like about that part of the design is that, this way, one of the twelve stars of Europe is bigger than the other eleven. Not a really big deal (and I don't know anyway why we have to have the twelve stars on the obverse and again on the reverse), but maybe they'll adapt the size of the three stars on the final design. Also, I would use the full country name on the €2 coin.

The CoA on six denominations is, well, OK - especially the large version is attractive in my opinion. But of course I would have preferred eight different designs. Sniff.

Christian

Two different country names appears because design of 1EUR coin has been taken from 5 Lati coin 1929-32.

One of my top 10 favourite coins of the 20th Century.

Sure, but all other current Latvian coins have the full country name too. That is why I was a little surprised about the two different versions on these designs. Well, some time in the (near?) future we will know what the actual coins will look like.

Christian