5 ECU Christmas

Switzerland never officially joined the European Union, yet in the early 1990s it issued a series of ECU-denominated pieces under a legal fiction that allowed non-EU countries to produce collector tokens denominated in the European Currency Unit — a basket currency that itself ceased to exist when the euro replaced it in 1999. These were never legal tender in Switzerland for face value and were sold directly to collectors at a premium.

The 1995 Christmas issue was part of that short-lived window between the ECU's collector novelty phase and its obsolescence.