Order by with priority

[sidsel]

A normal 'ORDER BY currency ASC' would return the following:

AUD
BGN
CAD
CNY
CYP
EUR
JPY
USD

I would still like to 'ORDER BY currency ASC' but have "USD" and "EUR" on top like this:

USD
EUR
AUD <-- from here order as usual
BGN
CAD
CNY
CYP
JPY

I have seen this done before but have completely forgot how it is done.

[NogDog]

How about...

SELECT currency, IF(currency = 'USD', 1, IF(currency = 'EUR', 2, 3)) AS sort_category
ORDER BY sort_category ASC, currency ASC