Mildly interesting: I found a 5 cents coin from 1942. 5 centime coins minted in copper-nickel were withdrawn from circulation in 1984.

18 comments

  2. > Everybody: Hey why don’t we freshen up the design of our coins? It’s been more than 50 years…

    > Switzerland: NOPE

  6. You should see the dozens of 10 and 20 Rappen coins from the 19th century that I have found in my wallet. I still remember the 20 Rappen 1881 I got as change for buying a sandwich.

  9. Can tell you from experience that A.) stores don’t accept them and B.) you can’t sell them since they aren’t worth anything. Keep it as a cool object.

  14. The price for making a 5-cents that way was too expensive. Therefore, they changed it into Copper-Nickel. However, nowadays it also costs more than 5 cents to make a 5-cents coin

  15. One of the reasons for the change was, that 5 cent and 50 cent coins are similar in size, so they were hard to tell apart by people with impaired eyesight, especially elderly people.
    The reason for them being of similar size is that they are/were made of different materials. 5, 10, and 20 centimes coins and 0.5, 1, 2, and 5 francs coins have a weight proportional to their value (a 5 Fr coin has five times the weight of a 1 Fr. coin).

  18. Our family has a little piggybank out of glass, where we all collect those old coins. Once in a while its fascinating to see like a 2 Francs from 1912 or coins from the 1880’s.

    Still, none of us found any of the old mintings with the sitting helvetia so far.

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