The ‘Mint of Finland 1860 – 2010’ coin set is one of the Jubilee series and it represents a journey to the roots of the Finnish national consciousness and from there up to the present day. The coin set comprises all the 2010 euro coins as well as a mint medal with the image of Finland’s first markka, a silver coin dating from 1864. The numbered coin collection is produced in a limited edition of just 7,000.
Attaining its own coinage and mint was a major step on Finland’s road to independence. Mint of Finland is marking the 150-year journey with its Jubilee-series collection ‘Mint of Finland 1860 – 2010’. The collection portrays the Finnish national consciousness from its birth up to the present day.
A total of 7,000 of the coin sets will be produced and each will be individually numbered. This limited number is unusual in that usually such coin sets are produced in much larger numbers.
The mint medal in the set depicts Finland’s first markka.
The mint medal in the centre of the collection is a depiction of Finland’s first markka coin. In December 1859 the Finnish Senate petitioned the Tsar for permission for the country’s own unit of currency noting that the rouble was too large a unit of currency for a poor country such as Finland. The advantages of a smaller unit of currency were understood in St Petersburg and the Senate was charged with examining the matter in greater detail.
At a full session of the Senate on March 10th 1860 a decision was made to propose as a unit of currency the markka, which would be a quarter of the value of the rouble and which would be divided into 100 penni. Based on this proposal Tsar Alexander II gave his approval to the new unit of currency on April 4th 1860.
The first silver markka was struck by the Mint on 15.10.1864. The independence of the monetary system that emerged over the following half century came to be one of the cornerstones of the whole economic autonomy.
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