France 6 piece commemorative coin set 1986-1998 (1-1-2-5-5-10 Francs)

6 piece coin set with each in Very Fine or better condition

1 Franc 1995 Institut de France

The Institut de France

The Institut de France is the umbrella institution that gathers five of France’s most prestigious academies. Founded in 1795 during the Revolution, it formalized older royal academies into a single republic-era body devoted to scholarship, letters, arts, and sciences.

It sits on the Quai de Conti in Paris, in a domed building originally constructed for the Collège des Quatre-Nations (17th c.). That dome across from the Louvre—if you’ve strolled the Pont des Arts—is the one.

The Five Academies

1. Académie française: Guardians of the French language. They publish the official dictionary and regulate usage. Forty members—les immortels—each occupy a numbered seat.
2. Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres: Antiquity, archaeology, philology, epigraphy—the deep textual past.
3. Académie des sciences: Mathematics, physics, biology, and beyond.
4. Académie des beaux-arts: Painting, sculpture, architecture, music, cinema.
5. Académie des sciences morales et politiques: Philosophy, economics, law, political theory.

What It Actually Does

• Elects lifetime members (high symbolic capital in French intellectual life).
• Awards prizes and grants (many funded by historic bequests).
• Manages foundations and significant endowments.
• Maintains a major library and archives.
• Serves as a kind of secular pantheon of French thought.

It’s not a university. It doesn’t teach students. It’s closer to a ceremonial-intellectual senate—a continuity mechanism between monarchy, revolution, empire, republic.
In brand terms, it’s the French state’s way of saying: these are the custodians of our language, memory, art, and reason.

If you’re thinking about it in comparative terms: it combines aspects of the Royal Society (UK), the Académie royale (ancien régime), and something almost Vatican-like in ritual gravitas—but firmly secular and republican.

1 France Jacques Rueff (economist) / Faceless Marianne

You'll receive a coin in this design in Very Fine condition or better.

100th Anniversary of the birth of Jacques Rueff

Obverse

• Three-quarter face portrait of the economist Jacques Rueff
• Sower (evocation of the franc)
• Legend "1896 JACQUES RUEFF 1978".

Reverse:

• Faceless "Marianne/République " allegorical woman standing frontally, draped, holding a torch in left hand. She is the personification of the republic, liberty, equality, brotherhood (liberté, egalité, fraternité)
• Laurel and oak branches, images of glory and strength.

Jacques Rueff

Born in 1896 and trained at the École Polytechnique, Rueff belonged to that rare French species: the mathematically rigorous civil servant who also understood markets as living organisms.

He served in:

• The French Treasury

• The League of Nations

• As financial adviser in London

• The Banque de France

• And eventually as a key architect of postwar monetary reform

He died in 1978, having seen the gold standard collapse twice — and having warned about both collapses.

2 Francs 1998 Universal Declaration of Human Rights

• Issuer France  
• Period Fifth Republic (1958-date)
• Type Circulating commemorative coins
• Year 1998
• Value 2 Francs (2 FRF)
• Currency New franc (1960-2001)
• Composition Nickel
• Weight 7.5 g
• Diameter 26.5 mm
• Thickness 1.80 mm
• Shape Round
• Technique Milled
• Orientation Coin alignment ↑↓
• Demonetized 17 February 2002
• Numista N#20
• References KM# 1213, Gad 1789# 551, Schön# 540, Franc 2023# 276/2

Front/Obverse:

• René Cassin, main author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is surrounded by the words: "RF René Cassin Déclaration Universelle des Droits de l'Homme".
• Palais de Chaillot, where the Declaration was signed on December 10, 1948,
• Text 1948 1998

Back/Reverse:

5 Francs 1996 Hercules with Liberté and Egalité

5 Francs 1992 Pierre Mendès France

10 Francs 1986 "Marianne Martiale"

On the obverse is depicted “Marianne martiale” in left profile, with a bonnet phrygien (Phrygian cap) adorned with ears of wheat and laurel on a stylised map of metropolitan France; Liberté Égalité Fraternité is inscribed around.

“Marianne” is the national symbol/personification of the French Republic, representing liberty, equality, fraternity — the republican ideals. On this coin, she’s given a martial (strong, assertive) styling, hence sometimes called Marianne martiale.

Why a rooster?

In Latin: gallus = “Gaul” (a person from ancient France), but also means “rooster”. A pun. The Romans noticed it. Medieval writers repeated it. Over centuries, the bird stuck.
By the Renaissance, the rooster had become a poetic emblem of France. During the French Revolution it re-emerged as a republican symbol—alert, vigilant, crowing at dawn (a metaphor for awakening and liberty).