User:M.nelson/Poppy quarter

The Poppy Coin is a Canadian 25 cent coin, featuring a colourised red poppy in commemoration of Remembrance Day. As the world's first circulation coloured coin, a total of 39,500,000 have been slated for circulation, in two runs. The coin was designed by Cosma Saffioti and Stan Witten.

The coin
The coin was released in two mintages. The first, in 2004, was for 28,500,000 coins, intended to honour Canadian fallen soldiers; the poppy being a Remembrance Day symbol of the dead World War I fallen soldiers, popularised in Canadian surgeon and soldier John McCrae's 1915 poem In Flanders Fields.

The second mintage, in 2008, was of 11,000,000 coins, featuring a new painting technique, pioneered on the 2006 breast cancer awareness quarter, to ensure that the colours would not fade.

2007 spy controversy
The Remembrance Day quarters came into prominence in 2007 when the United States government alleged that Canadian quarters, featuring radio frequency transmitters, were planted on U.S. contractors between October 2005 and October 2006.