Designer: Pertti Mäkinen
Ag 925, 38.6mm, 25.5g
Mintage BU 10,000 - PROOF 20,000


Obverse: A male and female hand placing their votes into a ballot box.
Reverse: Male and female faces.


Commemorates 100 years since the Parliamentary reform of 1906. At that point Finland was still a Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire. Until the reform, Finland was still funtioning under the Estate System of representation. During the previous century under Russian control, Finland slowly developed a conscious national identity and cautiously moved forward to foster it. The internal unrest during 1905 in Russia which led to reforms there, also paved the way for Parliamentary reform in Finland. The Four Estates voted themselves out of exixtence in favor of the reform. The new Parliament was a unicameral body that was elected by universal suffrage; the first European country to give women the vote. The number of eligible voters went from approximately 120,000 to 1.2 million overnight.



Note: the maximum mintage figure given by the Mint is 30,000 but the actual distribution between BU and Proof is not yet confirmed.

Beautiful. Are Proof coins that much more popular with collectors that they will mint twice as many as BU?

Well, the cynic in me believes that the mint issues more Proofs than BU because the mark-up in price is considerably higher. On the other hand, it may be so that when people look to purchase collector coins, they are in fact more interested in a Proof piece rather than a BU.

The proof market here is relatively young. The first official proof coin was issued only in 1991. Early on proofs were issued in relatively small amounts compared to the BU version. Today it is the other way around, so that normally the BU of any commem is the more scare of any issue. (This only holds true for the silver commems.)