The gold coins commemorating the inauguration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) in 2012 have recorded the fewest sales and the largest deprecation, with just about 2,000 of the 10,000 coins sold and a minus-33 percent investment return rate, coin collectors said.
Yesterday marked the seventh anniversary of Ma’s inauguration.
About 8,000 coins celebrating his second-term presidency have remained at Bank of Taiwan, the sales agent of such coins, with unsold ones to be melted when Ma leaves office.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
The bank has issued 1oz (28.3g) gold coins for each presidential election since 1996.
The 1996 coin commemorating then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and then-vice president Lien Chan (連戰) remains the best-seller, with 48,000 units sold, while the best investment and return ratio was for the 2000 coin for then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and then-vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), which has an investment return rate of 140 percent.
About 2,000 coins have been sold featuring Ma and Wu, which are the only set to make a loss, on the back of falling gold prices.
People who bought the coins have lost NT$18,000 (US$576.00) on their purchase, coin collectors said.
The price per 2012 commemoration coin was NT$54,000, factoring the international price of gold at the time of about US$1,700 per ounce, the NT$2,000 in the coin’s face value, production costs and a commission paid to Bank of Taiwan, they said.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
RSS