THE CURVED COIN CRAZE

What is it about curved, or cup-shaped coins, that appeals so much to collectors? Various world mints have increasingly explored issuing coins in unusual shapes such as cylinders, cubes, squares, and so forth, but none of those shapes have been as successful as the convex/concave combination.

In part it is the novelty of the concept, which so far has only been used by five world mints as far as I know, and three of them only issued their cup-shaped coins this year. It all began with the issuance in 2009 of two French coins that honored the International Year of Astronomy and the 40th anniversary of American moon landing, one in silver and another in gold. The French coins were big hits and are not easy to locate today, as very few dealers have them in stock.

Since then a number of curved coins have been issued by world mints, and of course there are the 2014 baseball commemoratives (half dollar, dollar, and $5 gold) that were popular from the time they were first announced in part because of their unusual shape, a first for modern American issues.

But the real reason the cup-shape is so popular with modern coin collectors is that it is a very effective concept when the subject matter lends itself so naturally to a convex/concave shape. The two most obvious topics that are well-suited to this approach are sports because the curved side resembles one half of a ball of whatever kind, and astronomy because the dome can also represent the surface of the earth, moon, etc., or of the sky. Geography is another area that comes to mind.

Because there are still relatively few curved coins some collectors are putting together sets of each of the ones issued so far, at least all the silver ones that is, since the gold coins are rather expensive. The 2014 American baseball coins are still $800 even after a recent dip. And even more prohibitively expensive is the French gold coin from 2009 which has a blue-colored insert and costs several thousand dollars.

It is not unusual for world mints to pick up on a design or shape used by one of their competitors and use it on their own coinage. There are countless examples of that such as our own mint issuing large, five ounce silver coins, which is something mints around the world have been doing for years.

It is important to remember how much our mint relied on the French and Australian coins when it was preparing the baseball coins for mintage, which Mint officials have explained was so difficult that they compare it to the moon landing in the words of Steve Antonucci of the U.S. Mint, quoted in a recent Wired magazine article.

According to coin media reports, one of the first things the team developing the baseball coins did was make reproductions of the French and Australian coins so they could study the specific minting requirements of a curved coin. And the legislation that created the coins specifically required that they be issued in a concave/convex shape similar to the 2009 French coin.

For now the concept remains popular with collectors and is likely to remain that way unless it is overdone. It works because it is a very effective way to visually represent certain themes, and it seems to strike the right balance between being different enough from other coins without being too unusual. But the question remains, to use an expression my father was fond of: How much is too much of a good thing?

To read the complete article, see: The Coin Analyst: The Growing Popularity of Cup-Shaped Coins (www.coinweek.com/featured-news/the-coin-analyst-the-growing-popularity-of-cup-shaped-coins/)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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