I have been looking at the Euro collections in the book that I won from Banivechi's recent contest. They're interesting and I like the designs. SO off to ebay I go to see what gives price wise. Then I return from ebay with some questions. HELP?

1) When they have these Euro Pattern sets, are the coins really patterns in the classic sense or are they just artists ideas of what coins might look like?

Example:

Hungary Euro Pattern Set 2004

2) If these are valid patterns, why is there a UK Pattern set?

UK Euro Pattern Set

3) Can the coin sets be purchased directly from the issuing countries' agents here in the US or ??

That's all for now.

Thanks.

This patterns, are not coins only artist ideas. We named this "medals" not coins, without numismatic value.

Are they issued by the individual countries or some medals company?

The latter. Ironically most of those "euro pattern" medals are marketed by British or Swiss companies. Here http://ret001qm.eresmas.net/eu-ingle.htm is a fairly comprehensive list, with lots of images.

Christian

That's a nice site. Very well done.

Wow, some of the "coins" are really of bad taste.

Taking the example of the Russian coins, those are doomed to fail. Why link Russia to the Tsar and the precious Tsar reign era??? And almost no Russian coins have english text - whoever designed it should go for some historical numismatics learning.

At least the Bulgarian coins are done much better, which makes me think that there might be two different companies involved with this "scam"

Nevertheless, whoever made that homepage did put in a fair bit of money for such "nonsense" trial coins. He did an excellent job.

The companies that make and sell those medals won't care about that. What they aim at is collectors who are willing to buy the pieces, period. Well, some of those medals are kind of humorous, like the döner kebap on a "Turkish style" medal. But most others ...

Christian