The mints of the world and their silver 1 oz coins

My main coin collecting theme is world modern 1 oz ASW coins, which arguably was started by the US Mint 1986 Silver Eagle, followed by the Perth Mint, RCM, RAM, China Mint, Russia Mint, Pobjoy Mint, etc. soon after. Older series like the Mexican Onza existed before but those coins were of inferior strikes which they then transformed to the Libertad series.

After the success of these major bullion programs, private mints and smaller nations followed suit, with the explosive result of designs and issues of which can be seen today.

I started in the year 2000, a good year to start as silver 1 oz coins minted before 2000 were relatively bullion issues and most people treated them as such. With the exception of a few key dates the coins were aplenty and easy to collect with reasonable prices (back then silver was only around US$ 5 / oz!). As the year moved forward, the music changed from bullion to commemoratives, which was good in that it gave many more interesting coins and designs but bad in that you have to spend more to collect them all! Surprisingly no one came out with Pokemon silver coins yet although I won't be surprised if they come out in a year or two.

Until the next journal!

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