hardest to find coins

[svendowney]

What coins seem to be the hardest to find in circulation in your country/area?

I live in Northwest Italy, and the hardest coins to find are:
Luxembourg, especially 1, 2, and 5 cent I have never found 1, 2, 5, or 20 cent in circulation.
Finland is almost as hard to find, but 5 cent Finland appears very common. I have never found 1 or 2 cents in circulation.
Slovenia is difficult, but probably just because they have only been around for one year.
Coins of Portugal are next. It is hard to find all but the one euro coin. I have only once or twice found most of the others. Ireland is hard to find one euro, and two and one cent coins, but fifty, twenty, and ten cents are much more common. Greece is also difficult to find, especially the one cent through ten cent coins.
Germany, Austria, Spain and France are all very very common.
I did a study with 1000 coins last year, in both 50 cent coins, and 1 euro coins.
one euro coins 75% were Italian, with 23% being German, Austrian, French, Spanish. The remaining two percent of the 1000 coins were of the other countries.
50 cent coins was even worse! a full 85% of the 1000 coins were from Italy, 24% Germany, France, Spain, and the lowly one percent from the other eight countries!

[Dakkus]

EDIT: Sorry. The information given here seems to be incorrect. Check the reality from the pie diagram below

Of course I could see more from my eurodiffusie.nl statistics.
But here's how I feel it is:
Some 80% of the coins are Finnish.
The foreign ones are most likely from Spain, Germany or France. All Benelux countries are rare - I actually see about as many Portuguese coins as I see coins from the three Benelux countries added together. Since January 2002 I have seen two Letzebuërgish coins.
Also Greek and Italian coins are relatively easy to find. Austrians are surprisingly common, taking into account that I can't figure what kind of connection Finland and Austria have got with each other.

[Dakkus]

Okay. Checked my eurodiffusie stats.
Here they are:


So, as you can see, my memories didn't quite hold true
And the sample size is 608 coins, so not a terribly low amount, actually.

For deciphering the funny language here are two possibly unclear country names:
Duitsland = Germany
Oostenrijk = Austria

I figure the others are easy enough to guess based on English.

[Xavier]

Hello, dear €Friends,

I live in Tübingen, which is a rather smaller town living from its famous university. I am just a normal consumer, I´m not working for a bank or a store, but as far as I can judge, there are only very few non-German coins in circulation here. Of course, you get some French and Italian coins from time to time, maybe some Austrian, Belgian and Dutch. But I´ve never received any Portuguese or Finnish coin as change. (And you can bet I´d like to ). I think the situation differs in our capital Stuttgart, where I got e. g. some Slovenian coins and the Austrian ToR commemmorative coin from the vending machine a month ago. BTW, I got a Spanish 1c-Santiago-coin at the grocery today, which I really like.

Wish all a nice evening

[Ewri]

In my first 4 weeks of using the Euro, I can say that Italian and German coins are most found here, then, the Spanish & the French ones. Austria comes next. I have not seen a coin from Luxemburg in circulation, and only a few Finnish, Greek and Portugese Euro. Not even 1 Slovenian or Cypriot coin in sight either.

[eddydevries]

For deciphering the funny language

Don't call this a funny language!!!!

[Jes]

Hello!

I live in a small village in Spain. Here the most hard-to-find coins are luxembourg and Finnish ones. Also Greece and Ireland is quite hard...

OH! and of course I've never found Maltese, Chipriote and Slovenian coins in circulation!! (I swapped it with Eurobilltracker users )

If you want coins from Spain, I can give you a lot of them! we can swap or I can send you my coins if you pay the shipping costs.

I also keep the rarest coins in my draw (my desk) for example, I have:

1 cent and 2 cent from Finland (The rarest ones! )
lots from France and Portugal
Some coins from Italy (mainly 50 cents, I don't know why )

You can see HERE the coins I've found!

[tabbs]

For deciphering the funny language here are two possibly unclear country names:
Duitsland = Germany
Oostenrijk = Austria

Errm, regardless of what Bodo Wartke says about "Ik hou van jou" , Duitsland and Oostenrijk are much closer to the native Deutschland and Österreich than - let's take an example from some funny language - Saksa and Itävalta.

(duck)

That being said, roughly between two thirds and three fourths of the coins I have are from here (DE). The rest - percentage depends on the denomination and maybe other factors such as time of the year - are mostly Dutch and Belgian. But I think that (apart from the new members CY/MT, and the three non-EU members MC/SM/VA) I have come across coins from everywhere in Euroland ...

Christian

[debemaks]

Regarding , of course the 60-65% are italians, many french and germany (specially 20c, 50c, 1€ and 2€), a lots of 10c and 1€ from Austria 2007 brand new (IMHO they produced a lots and exported them everywhere...), few spanish.
Little Nederlands and Portugal, very few Belgium and rare or very rare Ireland, Finland, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Greece.
Regarding 2€ CC, it's possible to find something like 1 each 200 of the others (of course all italians).

[svendowney]

As far as the 2 Euro coins, I have had a different experience.
I got 600 euros (300 coins) from a bank last summer to search through.
I actually found many Commemorative coins. I think perhaps about 40? I did not write down numbers, unfortunately. I did find TOR coins from Austria, Italy, Spain, and Netherlands. as far as Italy commemoratives, I found mostly 2004 and 2006 with about the same number. (16 and 14). The 2005 coin is much scarcer and harder to find. I seem to find on average 3 2004 and 3 2006 for every one from 2005.
Also, there were a great many Belgium 2 € coins.
Italy had by far the most, followed by:
Germany
France
Spain
Austria
Belgium
Greece
Netherlands
Ireland
I did find one Luxembourg, one Finland, and one Portugal.

[Dakkus]

For deciphering the funny language here are two possibly unclear country names:
Duitsland = Germany
Oostenrijk = Austria

Errm, regardless of what Bodo Wartke says about "Ik hou van jou" , Duitsland and Oostenrijk are much closer to the native Deutschland and Österreich than - let's take an example from some funny language - Saksa and Itävalta.

(duck)

Of course. But then again, it's quite an arrogant sounding assumption from you that everyone on this forum knows what countries Österreich and Deutschland are. Ok, Deutschland might be known to almost everyone, but at least in Finland there are many people who could never decipher Österreich as meaning Itävalta/Austria.
Especially the deducing that Duitsland -> Deutschland -> Germany , is quite a task for someone.... say, Portuguese. Or, for a Finn who knows Germany as "Itävalta" or "Germany". It's not completely far-fetched that there could be a Finn who wouldn't be sure what Deutschland means.
It is relatively likely that a person reading my post could understand also those two, but since they are so different from their English counterparts, it is really nicer translating them while talking in English.

Of course, had the list been in Finnish, I would have translated everything.
I think Belgia, Irlanti, Italia, Espanja and Portugali would be guessable. But I think the rest would be impossible or at least difficult. (and when I get my first Maltese, Slovenian and Cypriot coins, also those will be guessable even in a Finnish list)
I would also translate the word "Suomi" to "Finland", because it is not safe assuming just everyone knows what country that is.
I know for fact that most of my friends don't know what country calls itself Magyar.

[tabbs]

it's quite an arrogant sounding assumption

Gee, that part of my post was supposed to a tongue-in-cheek response to what you wrote about funny language ...

Christian

[Dakkus]

it's quite an arrogant sounding assumption

Gee, that part of my post was supposed to a tongue-in-cheek response to what you wrote about funny language ...

Christian

Ok. Sorry, then. But the point of course remains valid, doesn't it?

[tabbs]

Yep, agreed. Well, guess I would recognize any EU member state by its native name, but when it comes to, say, what "Hungary" is in Finnish, I would be stumped. (Oh, and "Itävalta" I only knew because it somehow "suggests" Italy ... errm, no.)

Maybe some members's idea of using the for all kinds of purposes isn't so bad after all. Provided one knows what they represent.

Christian

[diogocanilho]

Here in the center of Portugal, I can see:
1) and coins almost in the same quantities...
2) and are usual to get;
3) , , are not so usual as french and german...
4) , , are really hard to catch... I think that even are easier than those 3 (I think that because Luxembourg is a place with lot's of portuguese emmigrants - maybe...)
5) coins are extremelly hard to see... In 6 years of € maybe 3 or 4 times...
6) , , I never saw...