Swissmint puts hot air balloons on silver coin

Swissmint: hot air balloons end up on a silver coin Keystone-SDA

Swissmint has announced a series of three coins celebrating Swiss aviation. The first of which will be available starting September 18 on the Federal Mint’s online shop, it announced in a statement today, and is dedicated to the “Pioneers of Swiss aviation”.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

This 99.9% pure silver coin has a face value of CHF20 ($25.10), a weight of 20 grams and a diameter of 33 millimetres. The mintage is limited to 7,500 pieces in “uncirculated” quality (issue price CHF25), and 3,500 pieces in “proof” quality (issue price CHF79).

The obverse of the coin is dedicated to the first balloon flights, in particular the founding of the Swiss Aeronautics Company in 1897. Against the backdrop of the Saanenland region and the mountains Gummfluh, La Videmanette and Rüeblihorn, four hot-air balloons can be seen, accompanied by the German inscription “Pioniere der Schweizer Luftfahrt” (literally, Pioneers of Swiss aviation). The reverse depicts a propeller representing technical progress, the inscription “CONFOEDERATIO HELVETICA 2025”, the value of CHF20 and a B for the city of Bern.

Translated from Italian by DeepL/jdp

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail].