Well, today is your lucky day.
I am flabbergasted.
I usually think of our friends to the North as being the level-headed, practical, sane people. But I guess every so often they have a need to do something outrageous.
you just KNOW that this coin is going to end up with an embarrassing nickname, like “loonies” or “twonies”.
“I’m going to pay for it in SaucerDollars”
“Do you have change for a UFOcoin?”
Oy. How to Embrace the Stupid Collectibilty Angle 101.
As a guitarist, I’d try that. I bet folks like Billy Gibbons and Brian May, who use coins for picks, would try ‘em!
To be fair, making weird small metal objects and calling them “coins” (even though they sell for much more than their face value) is a popular thing these days. (That is just a sampling, there are plenty more.)
Also, a few years back Canada released a fancy quarter (this time actually a circulating coin) that caused a bit of a kerfuffle in the US over people thinking it was a surveillance device.
And now I’ve been down an interesting rabbit hole. Another news story about the UFO coin included a photo of it in a group with other coins, including a smaller coin with a “native-looking” frog illustration and looked like it might possibly be made of wood. Some googling showed it to actually be gold (which I couldn’t tell from the low-resolution photo.) But in searching for “Canada frog coin” I first came to a series of 3-D coins with tiny glass figures of animals attached to them. I like those and the dinosaur image ones. And folklore. But I suspect that CalMeacham will most appreciate the comic book coins.
(tr;dl: I wish that I had a lot of money so that I could buy a lot of money.)
I was completely unaware of this. It’s like all those “black blot” stamps from back when I was a kid, those gadgety stamps never intended to be used to mail things, with lenticular 3D images on the surface, or printed on steel foil, or the like, issued solely so that amateur collectors would buy them and salt them away in their collections. Only now they’re doing it with money.
Good luck finding a vending machine that’ll take your guitar-shaped coin.
Black Blots:
They only minted 4000 and they are already sold out. :mad:
Leapin’ Lizards!
(If you don’t mind my mixing comic metaphors)
After that last post I did some more digging around in the Canadian coins. How about a commemoration of one of their most famous citizens?
Actually, Canada’s pretty well known for funky commemorative coins, including my personal favourite, the prehistoric critters with glow in the dark skelingtons.
The Royal Canadian mint is the actual manufacturer for quite a few ‘collectable’ coins for various countries- the dinky places that commission 'em often don’t have a mint at all- it’s not that surprising that they make some for their own country as well. Especially as mugs will buy 'em for crazy prices. You do wonder why they bother printing the ‘25 cents’ crap on at all though; should just print a link to some collector site to check the current price.
The RCM will make absolutely any coin you can possibly think of in an effort to make a buck. they will make any shape, any color, commemorating anything, in any denomination if they think they can sell five thousand of them to hungry collectors. And they almost always can.
If you can’t think of a gift for so and so and want to get them something that says “I spent money on a gift for you and trust me, no one else got you this,” hie thee to the Royal Canadian Mint website 'cause those bad boys have your back.
Sold out? Drat. I was hoping they’d have change for my million-dollar coin.
Guess I’ll have to go back to the glow-in-the-dark toonies.