BU and Proof boxes and sets In this section, you will find all information on the official BU and Proof boxes and sets in Euro: photographs, mintage and prices, quotations, various comments etc. Click on the left on the desired country.
Boxes and sets for collectors In the pages of this section, we present to you, for each country, the list of the official boxes emitted in BU, FDC, UNC and Proof qualities. It is above all advisable to define these terms: BU, for Brilliant Uncirculated, urges the minting institute to provide in these boxes new coins, manufactured at the same rate as the circulation coins. The FDC for Fleur De Coin urges “ theoretically” the institute to provide strikes in the condition of the same name. Let us recall that the FDC is the highest numismatic quality. In France, the Mint of Paris ceased issuing FDC since 1991 whereas the first BU sets had appeared in 1984. Thus, no more tokens of quality to be respected, all is much simpler! In addition, among the rare countries of the euro-zone which continue to call their annual boxes “FDC boxes”, one finds Belgium or San Marino… which strike, even for boxes, coins which are not such a quality! On the other hand, one notices for example that the coins contained in the Austrian boxes are of a very particular quality, so that the FDC designation could be allotted to them. In the following pages, we will thus gather under the BU/FDC term all the boxes made up of new coins however struck with the aim of being boxed for collectors. The average issue price of a BU box is €18.40. Some UNC boxes are also referred hereafter. UNC, for UNCirculated, corresponds to coins which did not circulate, but which was put in rollers. Thus, the Franco-German box “40 years of the treaty of the Elysium”, for example, was partly designed in France and partly in Germany; we know that the coins were put in rollers before being boxed. The coins are thus not at the origin intended to be boxed, the BU quality (and even less FDC quality) cannot be allotted to them. We however gather these boxes in the BU/FDC tables by adding a note on the description page. For the BU and UNC boxes, we indicate a quotation “2nd choice”: it is the quotation of the series, without the box, in its original condition. Thus, a slightly damaged box will certainly have a lower quotation than a new box, but we will however not reach the condition “second choice”, but a BU box cut in two (which will not thus have any more interest) could always be considered as a coins series in FDC quality (or EF/XF depending of the country) and will thus have the quotation indicated in “second choice”. The coins in PRF (Proof / BE in French for “Belle épreuve” / PP in German for “Polierte Platte”) quality are rather considered as “medals” than as currency coins, strictly speaking. It is besides for this reason that PRF mintages are not added to circulation mintages in the preceding catalogue. The PRF coins, contrary to BU ones, are struck with a very particular attention, one by one, by a highly qualified workman and the quality is checked after the striking of each coin! The defects on the PRF coins are by this reason extremely rare… We gather the PRF coins in a separate table, following, for each country, the table for the BU/FDC boxes. The average issue price of a PRF box, without gold medal, is €33.00.
Official or not? The official boxes and sets must be issued by governments or monetary institutes for their own account. Since 2002, an incredible number of series of non-official manufacture were put for sale, that we will decline from “almost official " (B) to “completely private and invented” (Z). We include in the reference book “€5” only strictly official sets and booklets (A) and those “less official” but being often considered by the collectors as important to have than the issues of class A.
From this “non-official” level on, one slips very quickly into the downright ripp-off since it is not absolutely obvious for the purchaser at the sight of the booklet that this one is not official. We do not index these items on our online catalogue:
You can locate on this scale the line where you wish to limit your collection without forgetting that you have the perfect right to buy a nonofficial series because it is beautiful, attracts you or moves you. On the other hand, because the immense majority of the collectors is seeking only the official series, do not buy it with the aim to speculate… Same remark concerning the varieties and errors contained in private series. We already saw it at the time of the ecus and euros of the cities, in France, that covetous manufacturers voluntarily created errors in their coins (spelling mistakes, different metal… no limit to imagination). It should well be checked that the error, if there is an error, is “involuntary” and nonintentional. We should also take care of names being able to mislead badly informed purchasers, such as MDC at the place of FDC, the first meaning “Circulation Coins”, therefore very current coins, the other meaning “Fleur De Coin”, the highest numismatic quality. To simplify: what we index is official, indisputably. As for the rest, be careful, you can make yourself happy but do not confuse official et private. |