Louis Braille’s name appears twice on this coin: in ordinary letters and in the raised dots of the very script he invented. Italy issued these 2 euro in October 2009 for the bicentenary of his birth.

Braille was born on 4 January 1809 in Coupvray, near Paris. At three he injured himself with an awl in his father’s harness workshop, and by five he had lost his sight completely. He first showed his writing system to fellow pupils at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in 1825, aged fifteen, and published a description of it in 1829. Braille reduced Charles Barbier’s twelve-dot code to six dots in two columns, so that a letter could be recognised with a single touch of the finger.

On the coin a hand reads an open book by touch, the index finger pointing at the vertical inscription LOUIS BRAILLE 1809-2009. Two birds fly above the book as a symbol of the freedom of knowledge, and below it Braille’s name is set in his own script. The designer is Maria Carmela Colaneri, who also created the national side of the Italian 2 euro with Dante; her initials M.C.C. are at the bottom, with the RI monogram and the R mint mark of Rome on the right. The issuing volume was 2 million coins.

Braille died in Paris on 6 January 1852, aged forty-three. On the centenary of his death in 1952 his remains were moved to the Panthéon, while the hands with which he read and wrote were symbolically left in his native Coupvray.

UNC grade: the coin has not circulated, shows no wear and keeps its mint lustre. It belongs in a collection of Italian commemorative 2 euro coins and in a thematic set on people who changed life for the blind.

A coin from the VPcoins catalogue is a gift that is interesting to examine and has a story worth telling.