Star Wars Coins Issued By Pacific Island Nation

19061969 wrote in with a link about how the Pacific Island of Niue is issuing a set of commemorative Star Wars coins. While the $2 coins can be used as legal tender on the island, the government hopes they'll be bought by collectors and help increase tourism to the tiny nation. From the article: "The coins, which will show a Star Wars character on one side and the Queen of England on the other, will be worth NZ$2, but made of NZ$117.25 worth of silver, meaning that if you're looking for practical tender, these aren't the coins you're looking for. 'You wouldn't want to go and spend them because they're only worth $2, but the value is much more than that,' Chris Kirkness of the New Zealand Mint told the Australian Associated Press."

Comments

news for nerds

[hjf]

Slashdot is finally honoring its slogan!

Re:news for nerds

[ciderbrew]

Dear AC You have advanced a level: +1 Geek, -1 luck with girls, +2 cool to other Geeks.

Re:news for nerds

[Smivs]

These are not the coins you are looking for!

Bullion?

[Millennium]

Isn't this really just a set of bullion coins, up to and including the fact that they're technically legal tender but you'd have to be out of your mind to actually spend them? Or are they hoping that value to collectors might push the value of these things up even further than the cost of the silver itself?

Re:Bullion?

[vlm]

Isn't this really just a set of bullion coins, up to and including the fact that they're technically legal tender but you'd have to be out of your mind to actually spend them? Or are they hoping that value to collectors might push the value of these things up even further than the cost of the silver itself?

The value of "legal tender" bullion coins over a private mint, is at least theoretically, the worlds legal forces will treat copies as counterfitting vs simple copyright infringement.

If I took a R2D2 action figure (for the foreigners, "action figure" = "doll for boys") and did some lost wax casting action and sold little $2K gold R2D2s, there is only wimpy copyright law preventing others from gold plating lead and tungsten R2D2s and marketing them as my own product for, say, $1900.

On the other hand, even counterfeiting foreign currency is a quick trip to jail...

Also public mints usually have some law about only minting true dates or something like that. Stamp all the pennies you want, more or less, as long as they're stamped "2011". On the other hand, a private mint could notice that proof grade 1909-S-VDB pennies sell for slightly more than pennies from a 2010 proof set, and there is really nothing stopping a private mint from making a new run of "model 1909-S-VDB psuedopennies".

I am told that a large number of "collectable" coins are manufactured/faked in China. Supposedly most 1909-S-VDB "proof" pennies are fake, but we can't / won't enforce the law. Its more of a "in theory" rather than "in practice" argument.

In summary : At least in theory, public minted coins are less likely to be counterfeit than private mint coinage.

Re:Bullion?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

When it comes to commemorative coins there are 2 values for them. You are correct that there is the melt value (the value of the coin) but then there is the collector value as well. The US government does the same thing and is still producing silver dollars as commemorative coins that are actually legal tender some are even are bullion coins as well. This similar to other coinage from such countries as South Africa, Canada, and China. Some of these coins carry a substantial premium above their melt value, others not so much. Even some non legal tender ingots have collector value to them since they are prized for their quality or rarity, the one of these I am most familiar with it the Engelhard American Prospector silver round.

Re:Bullion?

[Samantha Wright]

This is hilariously off-topic, but I'll bite. I guess I can burn the karma for a curious mind.

The cell has many, many different DNA repair mechanisms and backups. For starters, each of the 23 human chromosome pairs is actually RAID 1+1: two copies per pair, and each copy is made out of two complementary strands that contain negative images of each other. If one of these strands gets damaged, it's trivial to repair; all the cell has to do is slough off the bad side and re-copy the good side. This happens extremely often, so the cell has specialized mechanisms for dealing with common anomalies, such as thymine dimers caused by UV light. Sometimes, however, the nucleotides are so damaged that the repairs are incorrect. This is how most UV-triggered mutations are caused, but they're usually very minor.

If a chromosome actually breaks in two, there are two major cases to consider:

1. If the break is in the middle of an important gene, promoter, or operon, then the cell function may be compromised. Usually there are many duplicates, and there's always the other member of the chromosome pair, which is likely to suffice even in the most dire situations.
2. If the break is in between genes in the middle of junk DNA, there will be no immediate effect.

In both cases, however, it is highly likely that the cell will fail the next replication checkpoint. A cell with DNA that's too badly damaged usually chooses to kill itself, in order to protect the rest of the organism from threats like cancer, instead of dividing along its normal pattern. Replication checkpoints are comparable to checksums, but are less thorough and basically amount to "are all of the chromosome pairs unbroken?" In cases where this doesn't happen, the shorter segment is usually forgotten, including all of the genes it carries. When DNA is duplicated (in humans), it's held by a kind of handle in the middle called the kinetochore. Only the fragment that contains the kinetochore will get duplicated.

If the cell damaged is in the germline (a cell that will eventually turn into a sperm or ovum), this fragmentary part may be passed on, and the next generation of children will have what is called a chromosome truncation. These are usually fatal, and those who survive with them tend to have horrible, debilitating diseases. (Incidentally, this is also how the Y chromosome got its shape, but that's because the second copy of the X chromosome in women is inactivated at random and doesn't contribute a whole lot.)

I hope that answered your question. Maybe I should just go ahead and use the journal thing here...

Re:I say buy all of them

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the coins are being sold for a considerable premium over the spot price of silver.

A set of 4 1-ounce coins is £239.80.

Spot price of silver is about £25 per ounce, or 100 for 4. So there's about a 240% premium for the coins.

Re:How would this boost tourism...

[Lunix Nutcase]

How would not allowing overseas orders boost tourism? The point of this is to raise awareness of the island so that people will come. This is basically a huge publicity stunt taking advantage of the popularity of Star Wars to get an almost unheard of island country into the headlines.

Re:I say buy all of them

[p0p0]

Read the grandparent. There is this lovely little thing called "context".

Re:Touriwhat now?

[_Shad0w_]

I'm guessing they're theorizing people might go to see Niue, having now actually heard of it.

Woo!

[LordStormes]

I got the Palpatine coin! And it's got R2-D2 on the other side! Wait... that's not Palpatine... *mulph*

Re:Commemerative?

[jellomizer]

Commemoration a movie with top of the line special effect and a mediocre plot, That has chance the thoughts and minds of generations. Which made people believe if they focus enough they could get that remote control from the other end of the couch without getting up. And teach us such important moral lessons like.
Running away from your home to talk to a stranger is a good idea.
Allie yourself with criminals.
Join a religion which only has a few followers.
Do, not think.
Its OK to quit just as long as you get back before your teacher dies.
A 3 foot noisy light saber can stop everything
Bad guys do not have smart bombs.
There are only two sides to things they are either good or bad, no middle ground.

Re:I say buy all of them

[superwiz]

No, you don't want to melt them. Since they are legal tender, they can be declared at their face value for tax purposes. The moment you melt them, you'd "gain" the difference in price of the metal and the nominal value of the coin and owe taxes on it. This is different from US issuing golden eagle and such. The golden eagle is "circulated". So it cannot be used as legal tender.

Re:I say buy all of them

[_0xd0ad]

American eagle gold coins are legal tender.