The Erasmus programme was launched on 1 July 1987, and exactly 35 years later, on 1 July 2022, Germany put this commemorative 2 euro into circulation in its honour; the letter «J» on the coin is the mark of the Hamburg mint.

The idea of student exchanges was developed back in the 1960s by the Italian educationalist Sofia Corradi, who promoted it at European conferences from 1969. The programme was named after Erasmus of Rotterdam, a humanist who studied in Paris, took his doctorate in Turin and lived in England, Leuven and Basel.

His portrait is the heart of the design, beside a beacon from which a beam of links runs to other lights and turns into stars. The inscriptions read «ERASMUS PROGRAMME», «1987-2022», «35» and «J»; the outer ring carries the twelve European stars. The artist is the French medallist Joaquin Jimenez, and EU citizens picked the motif in an online vote among six proposals.

Hamburg struck 3.57 million pieces. The coin fits a commemorative 2 euro collection in two ways at once: among the joint issues of the whole euro area and in the German set of five mint marks.

UNC condition means the coin never circulated: there is no wear, the original mint lustre remains, and only minor bag marks are acceptable.

A themed selection that includes this coin is easy to expand with other items from the VPcoins catalogue.