What country mints the world's coolest/sexiest currency?

Question’s in the title. Include pics in your post, because I’m lazy and can’t be bothered to look it up myself.

Canada has some pretty cool gold coins.

The new Canadian bills are not too shabby either.

Holy shit - is that holographic snake coin actual currency or is it just a novelty item? It’s face value is $150 but it’s selling for ~$1,650, so I doubt anyone would actually spend it. But I’d sure feel like a rockstar spending one anyway (“keep the change”).

I’ve always been partial to the pretty Euro bank notes and the relative intuitiveness of Euro coins, at least compared to US ones.

I was surprised by how boring the Euro was as a currency, to be honest. The colours on NZ and Australian notes are much brighter and the designs more vibrant and interesting, IMHO.

I still prefer the lightness and simplicity of the Euro design. The Australian ones seem gaudy and I can’t figure out what the current NZ series is.

I remember on my first school trip to France at the age of 12 being interested to note that the 100 franc note had bare boobies. Hey, this was before the WWW, you had to take what you could get.

Even more exotic, the Cook Islands $20 note has a naked chick riding a shark. If that’s not cool I don’t know what is.

And you can get them wet.

Leave it to the French… :slight_smile:

Wow, that is pretty rad. The only thing that would make it better would be if the shark had lasers attached to it.

The Royal Canadian Mint produces all sorts of commemorative, single-run, special occasion coins, medals, tokens and other metal badges and such. They are legal tender, having whatever face value assigned, but the value of the metal and art on them is typically much greater than the face value.

The largest gold coin the Mint has ever produced has a face value of $1 000 000, but is worth something like 5 times that much. Rumour has it one of them is being used as a coffee table in one of the Emirates.

The also produce coins (legal teder and commemorative) for much of the rest of the world, were responsible for making the 2010 Vancouver Olympic medals (with the designs on all of the medals of one type intended to be pieced together to make one larger image…which was apparently never done or photographed!) and manufacture bullion of the highest purity in the world at 99.999%. They were the first to produce circulation coins with paint/colour on them, created a more cost-efficient multi-plating technique for coin manufacture and I think were one of the first to use holograms of any type.

Visiting the Mint in Ottawa (and, presumably, Winnipeg) is free and IMHO it’s a fascinating tour. I’m always amazed at the artistry of some of the coin images. So beautiful.

ETA: I just remembered, the tour of the Mint isn’t free, but it is inexpensive. I just had a discount last time I went and forgot that a friend picked up the tab :wink:

The Cook Islands have pretty funky money all round. There are triangular coins, and wavy-edged ones featuring a squat little guy with a big dangly schlong.

Schlong guy also appears on the banknotes, but Naked Shark Girl is the clear winner.

The Australian Kookaburra series and Roo series were nice. Their Zodiac series was a good one, with the gold one ounce Year of the Horse being one of my favorite coins of all time.

China has a great Panda series, especially the 2001 issue, and their silver commemoratives are outstanding, as are the Zodiac coins.

Look them up yourself, ya lazy wanker.

The Dutch Guilders notes from ~ 1980 to 2002 were pretty nice looking. The transition to the Euro was an improvement in many countries but not in the Netherlands (euros are pretty bland in my opinion).

See the links on this page Netherlands - Dutch Guilder Currency Bank Note Image Gallery - Gulden / Florin Banknotes of The Netherlands from NL-96 onwards for examples.

Sigh, I still miss the ‘geeltje’ - which funnily enough refers to a red note - and have always been sad I never got the chance to activily use the 250 notes. At the the time of the switch to the euro, that was more money than I ever needed to spend.

Glow-in-the-dark dinosaur coin.

I think Canada wins.

Canada also had this 2004 Canada Day commemorative quarter, known as the “Bullwinkle” quarter.

Someone has to be the pedantic jerk so I will. You print currency and mint coins.

Canada also now has a glow-in-the-dark dinosaur quarter!