I recently heard a story from an employee at the European Central Bink (ECB), he recounted a incident which took place in a low population density area in the Luxembourg / Netherlands border region in early 2011. There due to technical difficulties and subsequent connectivity issues, residents were resorting to chopping coins to have the correct amount of currency in local shops and markets. A little like the old silver quarter coins traded in the early colonial America.
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He explained that in conjunction with the outage and the non use of the 1 and 2 cent pieces, locals had started to chop their 10 cent coins to produce a 2&1/2 cent quartered coin, this in turn lead to shortages of the 10 cent coin thus later requiring the 50 cent coin also to be quartered! This new 12&1/2 cent quarter coin made up the shortfall in the 10 cent coins. When internet connection was restored and businesses started depositing quartered coins to their local banks, the ECB was contacted. A team travelled to the area to collect the chopped coins and remove them from circulation, when interviewing the locals it was also learned that the chopping of the 50 cent coins had led to a shortage of these coins also, so in the very last days some €2 coins were also quartered, however none were ever recovered from businesses, banks or the public. This story however gets even more interesting as one elderly gentleman interviewed states that, his daughter-in-law had gotten so desperate that his rare €2 coin collection was raided, he cannot be 100% sure but it is believed that he had many rare mircostate €2 coins from Monaco and San Marino, including several „Princess Grace“ coins from 2007.
An article in Numismatics Quarterly takes up the story „these now chopped €2 coins may still be moving about within the numismatic community, it is estimated that a chopped €2 coin could be worth more money than many supposed error coins currently flooding the market, on such sites as eBay or BuyMy$$$HitCoin.com with potential values being around 4 times that of a normal rare €2 coin. In the case of the Grace Kelly, upwards of €10,000 could be estimated for just 1/4 of the original coin, assuming that it is still in Mint Condition. Investors and collectors are recommended to first seek advice from the highly informative Numista website Forum before having their quarters graded by 3rd party grading experts (PCGS or NGC) to ensure authenticity of the original coin and to preserve this rare and unique numismatic oddity in a plastic holder.“
Has anyone come across these coins, I am desperate to add one quarter of a rare €2 to my collection?
