One of the world’s premiere sporting events, the European Championship run by UEFA, is widely considered to be amongst the toughest prizes to win in international football, mainly because of the plethora of high quality teams on the continent that are eligible to play. Held every four years in a host country, in 2016 the honour falls to France and the tournament will take place between the 10th June and the 10th July. Like the hit 2015 Rugby World Cup coin, the Monnaie de Paris has decided to celebrate the event with a wide range of silver and gold coins, including some with a clever and unusual adornment.

The coins fall into three main bands. First up are a pair of face-value coins struck in a brilliant-uncirculated finish, and sold with a relatively high mintage. They can be seen at the bottom of this article. Secondly, there’s a range of clean, proof finish coins also carrying the same design, and offering a range of sizes that would suit most budgets from the €69.00 minigold 0.5g coin baby of the range, up to a hefty 5oz gold with a very small 99 mintage.

The most interesting coins have  a unique feature, a ‘football’ that seems to be passing through the coin, which is finished in a contrasting metal, gilded on the silver coins and white gold on the gold. The 1oz gold again features the same design used elsewhere, a player doing a volley kick on the reverse face, with a stylised football field using triumph arches as goals on the obverse. The silver coin is also available with this design, but additionally offers a pair of extra designs, one a player heading the ball, and another of a goalkeeper stretching out to save it. Beautifully done, these are sure to be very popular, the insert looking like perfectly integrated into the design of both coin faces in all three cases. Priced at €79.00 each, they’re pretty affordable as well and a great success. Sure to be a hit worthy of following on from the hugely popular oval-domed Rugby coin from last year.

Available to order now, the coins should be shipping in the next couple of weeks. There are plenty of dealers that offer Monnaie de Paris coins as well, often at lower prices than from the mint.

PROOF COINS

Using the kicking ball design from the selection above, the proof coins are clean struck and devoid of any insert, specifically the football passing through the coin. There are a pair of large 5oz coins, the biggest available – a 0,999 gold version, and a 0.900 silver, the latter selling for €475.00, and the former for a pretty high €10,000.00.

In addition there are another pair of gold coins available, a ¼oz gold coin selling for €510.00, and a cool little minigold 0.5g coin selling for €69.00, the latter even further evidence of the formats growing popularity.

SPECIFICATION

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FACE VALUE COINS

Much like the Royal Canadian Mints range of $20 for $20 up to $200 for $200 coins, also in the Royal Mints repertoire, the Monnaie De Paris issues coins that sell for the face value. In the case of this EURO 2016 range, there’s a €10 silver coin, although at only 33.3% silver it’s pushing the boundaries of being classed as a precious metal coin, and a €100, 0.999 gold coin of an unusual 1.8g in weight.

Mintages sit at a healthy 250,000 for the silver, and 50,000 for the gold. Both use the kicking football design and there are no variants. They have a brilliant uncirculated finish instead of the proof one common to all the other coins.