China will commemorate their historic first spacewalk with legal tender silver and gold coins, The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced on Monday. The Central Bank said 60,000 one-ounce silver and 30,000 one-third ounce gold coins would be minted by the Shenyang Mint and issued on October 8, 2008.
The obverse (heads side) of each coin bears a decorative solar system map design while the colorized reverse portrays a taikonaut conducting a spacewalk below the Chinese words ‘To commemorate the success of China’s first spacewalk’.
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The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has issued a new 10 yuan banknote sporting a design (shown below) commemorating the Beijing Olympics. The China Central Bank indicates a total of 6 million of the notes will be issued.
According to Chinese news reports, thousands of bank branches have already begun exchanging them to an anxious public willing to wait in lines for the chance at one.
In many world news stories, focus has been on the note’s Olympic design that has replaced the image of Mao Zedong, founding leader of communist China. Since 1999, the 50th anniversary of the Communist party taking power, Zedong’s face has appeared on all Chinese banknotes.
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It’s not the largest or heaviest gold coin in the world, but this commemorative Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Gold Coin commands attention. Weighing in at 22 pounds (10 kg), a diameter 7.09 inches (18 cm) and made from .9999 fine gold, the 100,000 legal tender Chinese Yuan coin will cost one cool million to own.
A spectacular price for sure, but is the coin worth its weight in gold? At gold’s current spot price of $942.80 an ounce and considering there are 12 troy ounces per troy pound, that puts the coin’s bullion value at about $249,000.
It’s rare to find any commemorative priced as low as its bullion value. Why?
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The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has an aggressive lineup of coins this year with a schedule of releasing 44 commemorative coins.
The central bank plans call for:
- 23 gold coins
- 21 silver coins
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The Chinese calendar offers an intriguing system of time measurement that predates all other calendars. For coin collectors, its yearly changing of themes also makes it well designed for commemorative coins.
February 7 marks the start of the ‘Year of the Rat‘, which occurs once every 12 years. (Several past, present and next occurrence years are, 1984, 1996, 2008, 2020.)
For this new year, there are several commemorative coins celebrating the event from at least two different countries.
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Chinese archaeologists have raised an 800 year-old merchant ship built during the Song dynasty (960-1279). It’s dubbed the "Titanic of China" and before sinking, it was hauling a treasure trove of porcelain, gold, jewels and other artifacts, including 6,000 coins.
The treasure ship, officially labeled Nanhai No. 1, or “South China Sea No. 1,” was discovered 82 ft (25m) below water in a bed of mud. That mud helped to preserve the ancient ship and its contents for all these years.
Thousands of artifacts have been recovered and the remarkable next phase has already occurred - the Nanhai 1 was lifted from the sea floor and loaded onto a cargo ship.
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Take the new two-click poll on the CoinNews website asking that very question (found in the upper right). Surprisingly, at least so far, results have been close to evenly mixed.
Compared to the U.S., interesting and different dynamics are in play with other countries and their small change. Several countries are actually suffering through serious coinage shortages due to hoarding.
Two countries in particular, Argentine and China, have experienced an up tick in entrepreneur-like activity where people find and resell small change - for a profit - to businesses or individuals who are experiencing shortages.
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