Joshua Parfitt
PAUSE for a moment before purchasing your next pint or pincho de tortilla – the €2 coin in your hand could be worth €2.5 million.
This is the suggested bid on Ebay.de for a €2 piece minted in Greece in 2002 – an astronomical 1.25 million times its actual face value.
The German seller cautions Ebay users ‘not to bid’ if they think the coin is not worth the suggested value.
And the reason for his/her confidence is because the coin shows an image of the Greek goddess Europa wearing ‘a bra’.
“A fabulous find: the first Rape of Europa coin, with a bra,” the seller wrote in a description of the coin.
“Who has again flouted the highest safety controls in Finland?”
(The Finland claim is because the coin was minted by the Bank of Finland over fears Greece could not mint enough coins when it joined the Euro in 2002.)
But the bra is in fact one of six defects on the ‘heads’ side of the coin.
An image indicate defects in the form of bumps on various parts of the bull and goddess Europa depicted on the commemorative mint.
The story it represents is the abduction of Europa by a lustful Zeus, who transformed himself into a bull to attract her attention and kidnap her.
Bus this famous mythological story – which gave Europe its name – will perhaps be notorious for adding a sports bra to the scene.
Collector EU coins are not a rarity – each member state is allowed to mint two commemorative coins each year.
The Greek €2 has by far been the priciest of its kind, but there are many Spanish commemorative coins also worth more than their face value.
One €2 piece in particular has a suggested bid of €1,000 on Ebay.es.
The 2009 commemorative mint celebrates the 10th anniversary of the birth of the Euro currency.
Its fame is based on its much ridiculed design, which shows a childlike image of a stick figure holding hands with the Euro symbol.
