I've only collected silver, mostly 8 reales, until this one.

Now, you might expect an 8 reales collector to acquire a Spanish escudo as their first gold coin, but I've been wary of buying into the current gold bubble. I hope to acquire a few nice 8 escudos when, and if, the price of gold drops back to lower levels.

As a fun distraction from my 8 reales focus, I've been building a theme set of coins that depict the sport of fencing, my other main hobby. Since the beginning of the year I've already acquired over a dozen nice silver specimens and today I received my first gold coin, a tiny 14mm, 1.24g speck, commemorating the Athens Olympics with a fencing design.

I've found that many countries, besides the host, produce Olympic commemorative coins. In this case we have a Bulgarian 5 Leva, dated 2002 with the national emblem, date and denomination on the obverse. The reverse has the dates of the first and contemporary modern Olympic competition and the host city and features a dramatic image of two fencers competing with epees, one of the three type of fencing weapons.

At some point, I'll get the best of these slabbed and build a custom set devoted to fencing coins. So, you can expect a few more journals with information about this unusual sport and its commemorative coins.

~jack

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