Commemorative coins for each Thai province

When Rikker blogged about new coin designs recently, I used the opportunity to ask him about the provincial commemorative coins I once saw on ThaiLex. He quickly provided me with the corresponding link at the treasury department.

While this site shows good scans of these coins, it does not give any details on them, like the number of coins minted each year, or who was the artist to create the designs. Also, strangely a total of 18 provinces are missing, but instead Pattaya, which is not a province but only a special kind of municipality, has its own coin. These might be out of stock, as on ThaiLex it has coins for all provinces.

These coins are only minted for collectors, as they are no legal tender - unlike the 50 states quarters program in the US, or the German 2 Euro coins. In both cases the coins are normal legal tender but it will have one coin for each of the first level subdivisions. It's more fun for the casual collector, every shopping can be a success to catch a item for the collection.

I only discovered it by accident that by clicking on the orange text in the catalog a webshop opens in a popup window to order the coins. Congratulations to the web designer for hiding it so well - unlike the blue details link there is no indication that it is a link, except maybe the Thai caption "ผลิตภัณฑ์ที่เกี่ยวข้อง". Anyway, the prices for each coin depend on the size.

Diameter	Price per coin	Price for 77 coins
2.5 cm	15 Baht	1155 Baht (25 Euro)
4 cm	120 Baht	9240 Baht (185 Euro)
7 cm	500 Baht	38,500 Baht (770 Euro)

I am not sure if I will make it to Chatuchak weekend market in this vacation, as that should be the place where these coins are easiest to find. Anyway, only the smallest version would fit the budget I would spend for such collectibles. Or maybe I'll just buy the one for my favorite province Surat Thani?