2023 Austria Cupro-Nickel €3 Marine Life (Stony Coral)

Coin Highlights:

• Cupro-nickel composition.
• Individual coins are packaged in protective packaging.
• Mintage of 65,000 coins.
• Obverse: All 12 of the magical sea creatures in the Luminous Marine Life series are shown in silhouette on the coin’s obverse. Air bubbles up between them and a tail fin disappears beneath the waves to the right.
• Reverse: On the coin’s reverse, a wide band, reminiscent of an old-fashioned porthole frames an aquatic scene that features a coral reef. Stony corals are depicted in the top left of the scene, sea fans to the right, brain coral in the center and sea anemones in the bottom left, while clownfish are dotted around the reef. When the coin is illuminated with UV light, the coral and sea anemones glow and change color.
• Guaranteed by the Austrian Mint.

Protect your colorful Marine Life coins by adding this capsule to your order.

Add this 2023 Austria Cupro-Nickel €3 Marine Life Deep-sea Stony Coral coin to your cart today!

A UV torch gives off a special type of light that appears to bring the underwater creatures on the coins to life as they change color and glow vividly. Tiny creatures, which only become visible when you shine UV light on them, also appear here and there next to the main characters in the series, adding an element of surprise. As improbable and magical as the sea creatures featured on the coins may seem, they really do exist. Even though some of them live in the perpetual darkness of the deep seas, where no ray of sunlight penetrates, they all have extraordinary luminous qualities. They flash, sparkle and glow and change color when necessary.

The fifth coin in the Luminous Marine Life series, transports you right into the most species-rich of marine habitats – the coral reef. This is because stony corals use themselves as material to build fantastic living worlds where other sea creatures also thrive, including the clownfish, with its bright orange body and three black-edged white stripes.

Hermatypic or reef-building corals can have the most diverse growth forms. Most stony coral species excrete calcium carbonate at their base and a calcareous skeleton is formed through a symbiosis with zooxanthellae, unicellular microalgae. They reproduce by forming new coral calyxes on top of old ones or when coral polyps become independent. If undisturbed, they will continue doing so as long as the seawater remains clean and there is enough sunlight.

Some species of stony coral can live for several hundred years, which may explain why at certain points in the history of Earth, stony coral formed entire islands and archipelagos over thousands of years, such as the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Maldives. Moreover, about 600,000 years ago, corals began to build the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. Today, with its 359 species of stony coral, the reef is the largest structure created by living creatures on Earth and provides habitat for a multitude of other species.

Austrian Mint Commemorative Coins
APMEX is proud to offer products from the Munze Österreich, or Austrian Mint. With more than 800 years of coin-production experience, the Austrian Mint in Vienna has become world-renowned for coin production and precious metals processing. As a subsidiary of the Austrian Central Bank, the Austrian Mint's foremost task is to produce all of the circulating euro coinage for Austria. But the mint also strikes an impressive range of collector coins and medal, along with producing some of the world's best-selling bullion coins. In addition to the popular Philharmonic coins, the Austrian Mint produces many beautiful commemorative coins to honor people, places and events of its history. More than 400 million coins are produced at the Austrian Mint each year.