CitaCirculatingissue
Check whether or not the coin has ever circulated. If a coin was intended to be really used as currency, check "yes". If on the contrary the coin was only released for collectors and never circulated, check "no". If you are not sure, select "Unknown".
I really like this distinction because it allows me to filter out a lot of coins that I am not interested in. Problem is that there is a grey area in the following cases:
Some coins have been issued at face value and were legal tender at any place in the country, but where not part of regular coinage. Examples are the French 100 Francs & 10 Euro series, Dutch silver 10 & 50 Gulden and 5 & 10 Euro, and German 10 DM and 10 Euro coins.
In the catalog the French examples are seen as circulating issues but the Dutch and German are not. Still I would like to distinguish those with other coins that were issued above face value and hence never circulated. Shall we at a tag named 'issued at face value'? Shall we also have a field for 'bullion coinage'?
Cita: "Jarcek"Hmm, such high mintages usually go for circulating coins. Are they normally used for commerce?
Not really, but they could/can. Depending on the country you would see them here and there and many banks have/had some available at face value. You could pay with these anywhere, but cashiers are not always enthusiastic getting them.
The point is that they have been issued at face value, and even in decent quantities, and can also be spent quite easily at face value.
That is very different from the more 'fantasy' commemoratives of which so many are produced and do not perform any monetary function at all. First you overpay acquiring them from the mint and then the only thing you can do next is worshipping the metal disk or find a bigger fool.
Another more serious category of coins are bullion coins. Those are issued to perform a different kind of monetary function. They allow for investing in physical precious metals in small and standardised units. One usually has to pay a premium at the mint but that is usually a lot less than is the case for a fantasy commemorative. Common bullion coins have mintages in the millions as well.
I am with you, Jokinen!
Those commemorative coins are in between and I also see a big difference between coins that are issued at more than face value and those that are issued at face value. I can confirm that the German 10 DM coins were found in circulation sometimes (more than the current 10 Euro coins). It should be technically easy to add one more category (or two) as you proposed.
I'm not orange and also in other things I'm not a Donald at all. DonChori like Don Felipe or Doña María, por favor.
Just to add a bit more food for thought here, in the past few years Canadian Mint is issuing a few series of non-circulating coins at face value, e.g. 20-for-20 (and a $25 variation), 50-for-50, 100-for-100 and even 200-for-200. These coins can't be used to buy anything but supposedly you can exchange them for the face value of circulating currency at any bank. I've seen an article in the paper sometime ago about someone having problems with that though.
Shall we introduce a field for 'standard coinage'? For the existing coins in the database the value can be copied from the 'circulating' field. That will leave only a few entries that should be updated accordingly.
I really think it has to do with the intention of the mint (or whatever the local coining office is called). Were the coins intended to go into circulation and be spent as money? Then it's a circulation issue, even if in practice people hoarded them and they didn't circulate (like the US Kennedy half dollars). Was the coin issued as a special collectors' piece, even if marked as legal tender? It's a non-circulating issue, even if some people have spent them in shops at face value. For example, US dollar coins from 2012 on are collector issues, but I have found them in change from transit ticket machines, and I'm sure there have been kids who unwisely spent the American Silver Eagle their grandma gave them for their birthday, at face value.
A more recent example of pretty much the same problem is the Russian 25 ruble Sochi commemoratives. Issued with a mintage of 10 million (times two because of the 2014-dated reissue, times four types, for a total of 79 million), they were almost certainly intended to circulate. Ha. Ha. Ha.
I'm a stickler for getting "circulating commemoratives" from circulation (as opposed to buying them in coin shops) - in practice, this means that I politely ask cashiers a lot (they tend to be surprisingly helpful).
Over the last four years or so that I've been doing that, I've seen a total of two 25 ruble coins (and one of them was still in its capsule, apparently having been directly spent that way). I might have missed the initial 2011 rush, however (and/or they might not have been put into circulation in my city).
I agree that "standard coinage" is a weird label; in my mind, it would include a lot of non-circulating issues that are otherwise standard (e.g. the sets-only 1 and 2 euro cent coins of countries that round to 5), and exclude many obvious commemoratives that did circulate a lot (e.g. the US bicentennials). Not sure what it would do to the 25 rubles, unfortunately.
