BoE's €12 coins: bought for €13.75, sold for €18

Bank of Spain's €12 coins: from €13.49 to €18 per piece

A collector wants to get rid of their 12 euro coins from the Bank of Spain. They find a buyer, but only if they go to Madrid: on the other side, there are those who pay 13.49 euros per unit, provided it's in person. In Bizkaia, another offers 13.75, with a limit of 250 to 300 pieces. And a few clicks further down, the same coins are sold for 18 euros, shipping included. Between the purchase and sale price, a market with its own rules opens up, where what matters is not the metal, but the postal code.

What are the Bank of Spain's €12 coins?

They are commemorative silver pieces issued by the Bank of Spain, with a face value of 12 euros —about 2,000 pesetas— divided into series of eight mintings. Their interest is twofold: numismatic and metal. Outside the official circuit, their price detaches from the face value and is set by a parallel market, a continuous flow of buy (BID) and sell (ASK) offers that are renewed daily on the most active lists.

Buying at €13.75 and selling at €18: the market range

On the buying side, offers range between €12.50 and €14.40; on the selling side, between €13.49 and €18.00. On paper, someone buying at 14 should not find anyone selling cheaper, and it happens: on the same list, purchases at 14 euros coexist with sales at 13.49. The discrepancy has a trick. Almost all purchases are 'in person', tied to a province. The buyer paying 14 euros only does so if you come to them; the seller in Madrid offering at 13.49 does not ship.

Why distance sets the price

It is argued that if shipping were an option, more than one offer would have disappeared as soon as a sale appeared. But it is not. Transport is the variable that moves the price the most: a sale with MRW included at €18 competes with another of 100 coins at 13.80 plus shipping from Navarra. Large lots, from 400 to 600 units, are concentrated in Madrid and Valencia; Bizkaia and Navarra contend with distance. The market behaves like several markets stuck together.

Why pay up to €19 for a €12 coin?

For the year, condition, and series. The highest recorded payment reaches €15-19 per unit of 2000 pesetas, with one condition: complete series of the eight mintings, without oxidation, and in original packaging; the entire series is paid at 120 euros. The premium over the face value ranges from 4% for the cheapest individual coin to 58% for the best-paid one. Euros are not bought: continuity, packaging, and absence of spots are bought.

Expired offers, uncertain prices, and cross-editions

The problem is not the price, it's traceability. There are buy offers without a figure —'negotiable', 'price to be agreed'— which, in an open book market, is cheating: no one knows the real position of those who stay silent. Accounts appear that withdraw and re-publish, copies of old lists that carry wrong quantities, and editions that spread uncontrollably. A lot went from 200 to 600 units due to an edition that others copied before correcting it. The list threatened to restart to purge the inert.

With that range, the logical thing would be for not a single transaction to occur. And quantities disappear. Fourteen and a half years later, the price of the same coin still depends on the city of the person holding it.

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