€ and $ coin design
The US Mint (nope, not the candy people… the people who make coins) is experimenting with coin designs.
I wonder what would happen if all these people would find out about Euroland? Where all the coins have the same design on one side, but the other side is different across countries. And they already got something like 10 designs (pardon me for not remembering how many Euro-countries there are) and as the 10 new EU members join it across the coming years, it will only be more fun with the designs. And both the Euro coins and the State Quarter Program coins are in active circulation.
I actually bought the official mint set from the EU in 1992 with the first 12 official 1 Euro coins from each of the 12 member states. However, I haven’t kept up with it for two reasons:
1) The European mints seem to make terrible products. This actually isn’t just an European problem - the quality of the Canadian mint is also sorely lacking. Poor packaging means that the coins will degrade over time.
2) There is very little collector interest. I go to eBay and I see incredible interest in various US coins. But for some reason, coin collecting seems to not have a lot of demand for even very beautiful international coins. Example: look at the gorgeous Australian lunar series. Beautiful, but not very much appreciation there. Compare that to the 1999 Silver Proof Set.
From time to time, I do still buy foreign coins, but I have the feeling that globally most mints don’t really embrace the collector market.