What’s New in NumisMaster

A central figure in the building of Estonia’s economy from 1918-1940, Jüri Jaakson was a consumate politician, banker and statesman. He is honored for a life of service to Estonia on this 2020 silver 15 euro issued by the Bank of Estonia, for which he was president from 1926-1940.

We took a break between Christmas and New Year’s, call it our Happy Holiday’s battery recharge week, but even then we had the database working on updates, running precisely calculated updates to precious metal coins that closely track spot prices. Because of the huge number of coins or master records in the NumisMaster system this update takes time, so while the servers worked for us, we rested up to hit the ground running in 2023.

Close to a thousand new master records were added to NumisMaster during the weeks before Christmas and the first week in January. Just over a thousand images were added during the same period, with most being for these new master records and about a hundred or so covering other dates or countries.

But you need specifics if you are to find them quickly in NumisMaster, so here’s a list of some of the countries covered and the number of coins added for each country.

• Cyprus was brought up to 2022 with new issues and many new dates

• British Virgin Islands got over 90 new types added to bring it to 2022

• Estonia was brought through 2022 with 20 additional coins and a number of new dates

• Tokelau got the works with almost 300 new types and 230 new images

• Niue had over 220 new master records and images added

Since Tokelau and Niue contract out their commemorative coin production to a handful of private mints, we will be adding more in the months to come. Niue particularly is now a voracious issuer of commemoratives, with all kinds of licensed material from movies, comics and other pop culture areas.

You will see many of these coins marketed through distributors in Europe and America, but they tend to sell out quickly so if you are trying to complete a series it’s very important to watch those outlets continually. You might also want to check the striking mints website periodically for news of new programs and continuing series.

Keep reading this issue for great articles covering The 2023 Coin of the Year winners and Year of the Rabbit Chinese Zodiac coins. Happy collecting!

Tom MichaelAuthor