Twenty-five Francs 1955, Coin from Switzerland - detailed information

The Twenty-five Francs gold coin coin was a denomination of the Swiss Franc which did not happen.

After the earlier gold 10 Fr, 20 Fr and 100 Fr coins were withdrawn from circulation in 1936 - because their intrinsic value was higher than their face value, two new gold coins were planned in the 1950s with nominal values of 25 and 50 francs.

The design was chosen in 1954; the 25 francs coin represented William Tell and the 50 francs coin the Rütli Oath. The reverse was designed by Battista Ratti, and the obverses by Remo Rossi.

A total of 15 and 6 million pieces of the 25 and 50 francs version, respectively, were minted in 1955, 1956 and 1959. However, in the interest of maintaining the national gold reserves, the coins were never issued into circulation and remained the property of the Swiss National Bank. In a press release of February 2009, it was made public that most of these coins had been melted back into gold bars except for a remainder of 20,000 coins of each type and year (for a total of 120,000 surviving pieces); these remain stored at a bank despite numerous requests by the public to have them released.

None of those coins have ever been available to collectors, although some were distributed to dignitaries at the time in extremely limited quantities.