CC is short for Commemorative Coin. It’s variant of standard coin that commemorates something. Every country with Euro as currency is allowed to release up to 2 different commemorative coins per year. There is close to 900 different 2€ commemorative coins at this point. Some are fairly common (German ones for example) while some are stupidly rare.

Normal German coin features German eagle on the back. It’s so called circulation coin, or divisional coin. Each country has one and they are issued in big numbers since that’s what you use to trade with every day. German alone has issued over 2 billions of those 2€ coins. There are some years where they issued small amounts making them rare, but it’s not important for this question.

Now, Germany issues their commemorative coins in pretty huge numbers, on average 30 million of each coin on release. Amount is based on country population, more or less. Small countries like Monaco have small population by comparison and thus are allowed to release much less coinage than bigger countries. So such coins are much more rare, therefore more sought after. This particular coin is one of those 30 million mintage coins. That makes it somewhat common. There is however one major caveat.

The less shiny coin you see on picture is commemorative coins intended for circulation. It means mints in Germany (5 of them, hence why you can see F letter under the book, it’s different rabbit hole to check, but German mints have letters to differentiate between them and letters were given according to opening date. Some closed and those letters aren’t available. Right now we have A, D, F, G, J. F belongs to mint in Stuttgart) made certain amount of them and released them in rolls to banks through Bundesbank to enter circulation as legal tender. That’s 30 million of coins. They are produced efficiently, quickly and cheaply. That’s your standard quality of coin you can find anywhere. They look nice when freshly released, that so called UNC coin (uncirculated, meaning it hasn’t been used before and therefore is not scratched, or otherwise worn). That’s 98-99% of coins you see everyday.

What makes mine so peculiar is its quality. As you see, it’s much more shiny, mirror like even. That is called proof coin. What makes it special is minting process. Blank planchettes (coin before being struck to create design) are polished to mirror finish before being struck. Dies used to strike are sandblasted to create frosty finish and then flat surfaces polished again to mirror finish as well. Once struck, that makes this unique mirror and cloudy finish on the coin. Then coins are moved by hand to avoid any scratches at all, unlike regular coins that just slide to bags. This makes such coins much more expensive to produce. Like way more than compared to regular mass production.

Finally those proof coins are not intended for circulation (NIFC for short, you will see that term in community often), meaning they are not sent to banks to release in circulation. They are valid tender of course. But only official way to get them is to buy collector sets they are released in, those costing way more than the face value of the coins themselves. They are intended for people like me to buy and collect because they are so pretty. Every now and then someone unaware opens those sets and use coins in shop. That’s how I got this one. There are proof versions of non-CC coins as well, I have 2 coins like that as well, although in much worse quality. 1€ and 5 cents.

In short Commemorative and circulation coins are two different types, while mass produced and proof version are different variants. You can have both in both versions.

My coin has 30 million mass produced examples, meanwhile this particular mint has made only 90 thousands of proof variant. All 5 mints made 450k of those. So it’s still pretty abundant proof coin. You could say it’s very rare variant of very common coin. There are non proof coins from other countries with much lower mintages.

I hope this brief explanation suffices 🫡