Suriname Silver Coin

A few days ago while I was reviewing my silver coins I came across a tube of my 1 oz Suriname Silver coins, that I bought about 7 years ago. This coin has quite an interesting story and most of my fellow silver stackers probably aren't aware of it! :)

It is an official Suriname bullion coin that was minted only for a few years by a private mint from Netherlands (European Central Mint). It was supposed to rival other bullion coins like Austrian Philharmonic, Canadian Maple Leaf and others. And it had acceptable pricing in addition to a quite beautiful design.

But production of this coin stopped only after a few short years because the mint that was producing them was also minting fake £1 coins and was in the epicentre of a massive counterfeiting ring that got busted in 2014.
An article in the UK's "The Independent" revealed that European Central Mint was producing at least £4m worth of £1 coins each year since at least 2006. This was one of the biggest operations in terms of scale and sophistication in UK's history.