Jackpot!

kayak and umiak

License plate collecting is on hold because plates are for the lifetime of the car or are returned to the government.  Instead we have been having a great time looking for commemorative 10- and 20-kroner coins.  The current series consists of different ships, but also includes a kayak and a Faroese boat, an open wooden boat.

Other series have been towers of Denmark

Svaneke Water Tower

Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales

The Nightingale, 200th anniversary of the birth of H.C. Andersen

and coins celebrating The Polar Year.

Northern Lights

In addition to series, there are coins issued to commemorate royal weddings (no coins for royal divorces), Queen Margrethe's big birthdays, and her silver jubilee.

We could go to the coin store and buy these, but at a price greater than face value.  We do go to the store and look at them, along with all the other coins.  The shop owner seems to have infinite patience for showing us his unusual coins and notes and has stories about medals displayed in the shop.  When we asked if banks sold rolls of coins he thought we meant uncirculated coins (like a whole roll of California quarters).  He said we could possibly buy some at the National Bank, but that wasn't what we wanted.  We thought we would buy a roll of circulated coins and look through them, hoping to find coins from the series listed above.  He thought we could do that, so we headed to the bank.

We were lucky because my favorite teller was working.  In the past she has helped me with my Danish and made sure I understood the online banking.  When we told her our mission she showed us a roll of uncirculated kayak coins, which would have saved us a trip to Copenhagen if that is what we had been after.  When she understood what we wanted, she asked if we were looking for something specific.  She went to the safe, pulled out a box with about a dozen envelopes, and took one uncirculated coin out of each.  This was less expensive and faster than we had dreamed!  We now had twelve more coins for our collection, including a couple older (1995ish) ones we hadn't even see before.  We thanked her profusely and took our loot to the waiting area to exclaim over our good luck.

It gets even better!  She came over with some very old kroner and asked if we wanted them because they had been brought to the bank, which had no use for them (a little like the time we were at a U.S. bank and they gave A. a Euro that had been brought in).  The teller asked if we were interested in coins from other countries and there is only one answer to that question!  She brought over a whole bag of coins and I think we might have squealed!  The most unusual was a silver coin from Sweden marking the 500th anniversary of the Riksdagen or parliament.

The teller said she didn't want any U.S. coins because she doesn't collect anything, so maybe we'll bake something for her.  Any other ideas?

We now have coins from the bank safe, circulation, coin store, neighbors, and thrift store, where they sell coins buy the kilogram.  And they are all smaller than a license plate.