Celebrating 40 Years of Coin of the Year

The year 2023 brought much excitement for the Coin of the Year program. At the beginning of the year, things were on track for another usual year following the timeline implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COTY 100 was announced in the January issue, the Top 10 appeared in the February issue, and the 2023 Coin of the Year Champion was announced in the March issue of World Coin News. Behind the scenes however, discussion of change was in the air among COTY staff. COVID had brought about doing virtual ceremonies that were uploaded to YouTube and NumismaticNews.net, but they weren’t the same as the live ceremonies that everyone loved attending. Some staff members also pointed out that it can be confusing having an awards ceremony for coins dated two years earlier. The 2023 awards honored 2021-dated coins, 2022 Coin of the Year honored 2020-dated coins and so on. The team put their heads together and cooked up a plan: what better time to close that gap and bring back the live ceremonies than celebrating the 40th Coin of the Year?

There were many things to discuss. A normal year has about six months of work behind the scenes before COTY 100 is even announced. Upon establishing a new, blooming partnership with the American Numismatic Association and deciding to host the awards ceremony at their World’s Fair of Money, the number one question the team had was “can we do it in time?” The answer was yes. The COTY team had a renewed conviction to make it happen.

The call for nominations was sent out to mints from around the world at the end of February, asking them to submit their best 2022-dated coins. The team was unsure of how well the response would be, as mints are used to seeing the call for nominations in mid-summer. Apparently, there was no need for worry, as the team received a flood of submissions. Over 500 coins were submitted, a record for the program and over 100 more than the previous round.

The team finally publicly announced on May 30 that the 40th Coin of the Year would be held in Pittsburgh in conjunction with the World’s Fair of Money. This announcement seemed to make everything all the more real and kicked off a flurry of new things to get done. This isn’t just any Coin of the Year, this is the 40th after all.

To celebrate, the staff was excited to put together a few exclusives such as COTY trivia, a behind-the-scenes interview with COTY co-coordinator and NumisMaster Senior Market Analyst Tom Michael, as well as a trip down memory lane with 40 Days of COTY on their Facebook and Twitter pages which highlighted all the past Champions.

Their hard work paid off. The category winners, also known as the Top 10, showed the best of the best of 2022-dated coins. The nominating committee had their work cut out for them narrowing down the 500 coins to just 100, leaving the judges panel with the near impossible task of voting to decide the category winners. Those winners, presented here, show a variety of themes that bring out the breadth of the COTY competition. From the beauty of nature exhibited by South Africa’s Best Gold win to Australia’s Most Artistic, to the fascinating science of France’s Most Historical and Canada’s Most Innovative wins, the competition captures the complexities of the coins we love to collect.

The 40th Coin of the Year Champion had tough competition, but Austria’s 20 Euro silver coin The Black Hole managed to steal the judges’ hearts. Part of the Uncharted Universe series, the coin is concave on one side and convex on the other. The design illustrates the funnel shape created in space where gravity is so strong nothing can escape. There are lots of questions surrounding black holes, but there is no question that the Austrian coin is truly remarkable.

The following is the complete list of the Coin of the Year winners accompanied by commentary from COTY co-coordinator and NumisMaster Senior Market Analyst Tom Michael. Read further to find our exclusive interview with him and our weekly trivia.