On Thursday, 8 October, Latvijas Banka will issue "Chestnut", a silver collector coin with gilded details, symbolically depicting one of the heralds of autumn. The coin gives a new expression to a work by the artist who won Latvijas Banka's open design competition on the theme of nature last year.
Chestnut trees were first introduced to Latvia around the turn of the 17th–18th centuries and were found mainly in the parks of manors. One of the great chestnut trees served as the inspiration for the prose masterpiece Straumēni by Edvarts Virza. Beneath the branches of the chestnut tree, the household and their guests are depicted celebrating or resting after a day's work. In the early 20th century, the renowned Latvian landscape painter Vilhelms Purvītis immortalised a grove of these trees in his painting Blooming Chestnut Trees. A small number of sweet chestnut trees (Castanea sativa) also grow in Latvia, mainly in Kurzeme.
Figurines fashioned from chestnut fruits have become favourite playthings for children, and chestnuts are also believed to have healing properties. Carrying a chestnut in one's pocket is believed to protect against misfortune. For women, good fortune has traditionally been associated with a chestnut in the left pocket; for men, in the right.
The chestnut coin is like a talisman, embodying all the positive qualities of the tree and its fruit. In Latvian, the word for chestnut tree is used in both the masculine (kastanis) and feminine (kastaņa) grammatical gender. This means that the tree, and now the coin, belongs to everyone. Yet the reasons for carrying it in one's pocket remain individual.
The collector coin "Chestnut" was designed by artist Kaspars Līdums, who entered and won the 2025 design competition on the theme of nature with his design proposal.
The collector coin will be available for purchase only on the website e-monetas.lv/en from 12:00 (noon) on 8 October. The price of the coin is EUR 147.00; the purchase limit for one buyer will be 3 coins. The mintage of the coin is 3000. The coin has been struck by UAB Lietuvos monetų kalykla in Lithuania.