Many societies have a long-standing tradition of gifting money (banknotes and coins) to mark auspicious occasions – births and birthdays, weddings and other special events, where the value of the gift is as much social as it is financial.

The Paris 2024 Organising Committee has unveiled the medals for the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games. The Monnaie de Paris has been charged with production of the medals, exactly a century after the previous Parisian Games in 1924.

The Mint of Poland has opened this year with the release of the ‘world’s first flying coin’. Unveiled at the recent World Money Fair Technical Forum in Berlin, it floats in the air via a motor hidden inside the coin itself.

Held last October during the Gala Dinner at MDC 2023 in Ottawa, Canada, the MDC Awards paid tribute to a sometimes-underrepresented part of coin design when it comes to awards, namely ‘Best Packaging (of a collectible coin)’.

The dates have been announced for The Coin Conference 2024, which will take place 28-30 October in Lisbon, Portugal.

The Mint Directors Association’s Sustainability Group has announced a webinar focusing on ‘ESG Reporting – Insights from Within the Industry’, scheduled to be held on Wednesday 13 March at 10:00 and 16:00 GMT.

The Royal Dutch Mint has launched its latest ‘good-cause’ coin issue, in collaboration with the Dutch Hartstichting (Heart) Foundation.

The central bank of Estonia, Eesti Pank, ended last year with an announcement that its Omniva coin collection campaign would continue into 2024. Although the programme had only been running for three months (as of December 2023), it had already collected around 3.3 million coins – 65% of which were 1 and 2 cent coins.

The Royal Canadian Mint has released several coins in varying designs and denominations to commemorate the Year of the Dragon. Amongst these are a 1kg gold coin with an extremely limited mintage and a pair of silver and gold coins featuring Extraordinarily High Relief.

In its recently published Annual Report for the 2023 fiscal year, the United States Mint reported a 12.1% fall in revenue to $4.68 billion. In volume terms, the Mint shipped 10.5 billion circulation coins to the Federal Reserve Bank compared with 12.1 billion in 2022, a decrease of 1.6 billion coins (-13.2%).

The Royal Australian Mint has teamed up with EQL, the commerce platform built to ensure reliable and fair product launches, to improve its e-commerce infrastructure and the experience for collectors as they aim to get their hands on new coins.

The People’s Bank of China has issued a series of commemorative coins to celebrate 2024’s Lunar Year of the Long (Chinese Dragon), which began on 10 February. Comprised of one gold coin, one silver coin, and one bi-metallic copper alloy coin, the set is all legal tender.

The Royal Mint has partnered with the United States Mint in ‘a groundbreaking collaboration’ between the Chief Engravers of both mints to produce a design for the 2024 Britannia and Liberty commemorative coins.

After three successive years of bumper coin production to meet COVID-induced shortages in the cash cycle, volumes of coin produced for circulation by the US Mint in 2023 finally fell back to pre-pandemic levels.

With the end of The Royal Mint’s year including the release of a new gold bullion design, and the beginning of this year marking announcements of its sustainability progress and a partnership with the Ministry of Defence to recycle electronic waste, Coin & Mint News™ covers the most recent updates from the organisation below.

The Royal Canadian Mint has released a series of coins to commemorate the centenary of the Royal Canadian Air Force. The centennial commemoration series features a fine silver proof $1, gold proof $100, and rose-gold plated $1 which is available solely as part of a seven-piece Canadian circulation coin set.

The Royal Australian Mint has collaborated with the Australian Space Agency to mint the world’s first coin of 2024, which pays homage to the country’s space exploration history.

Royal Joh Enschedé, in collaboration with The Global Note™, has released a gold embellished commemorative banknote in honour of footballer Dennis Bergkamp, which includes an augmented reality (AR) experience provided via mobile app

Following its acquisition of Reischauer, the Heimerle + Meule Group has announced its purchase of the Royal United Mint from the Belgian Heylen Group, which is the world’s second largest private industrial holding company in the production of coins.

A few recent personnel updates from The Royal Mint, Monnaie de Paris, Mint Directors Association, and Bavarian State Mint.