The Austrian Mint celebrates Easter with a Spring Lamb themed silver coin launch

The latest of the Austrian Mints small, cheap silver coins is now available and the subject this time is the Spring Lamb. Struck to a special-uncirculated finish, these quarter ounce sterling silver coins are nine-sided and have a large mintage of 50,000.  The design is nice and clean, a real lamb and a symbolic historical one filling this face with just the date inscribed unobtrusively. The obverse carries the coat-of-arms of the nine Austrian provinces radiating out from the denomination. A border carries the large inscription ‘REPUBLIK OSTERREICH EURO’.

Available now, the coin sells for €18.60 and comes mounted to a blister card. There’s also a copper version available with a mintage of 200,000.

MINTS DESCRIPTION: Much used in ecclesiastical art, with its youthful innocence, exuberance and vulnerability, the lamb has long been a symbol of spring, of birth, of life itself. Easter is the time of year most associated with this sweetest of creatures, which graces both sides of our 2017 Easter coin in both special uncirculated quality in silver and uncirculated quality in copper.

In Christian iconography the lamb is often depicted holding a victory banner, which represents the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Above a realistic illustration of a lamb in the foreground of the reverse of the coin, a naïve representation of the Lamb of God is holding such a banner. The latter is from a relief sculpture found on an early 13^thcentury keystone in parish church of St Egidi in the Austrian province of Steiermark (Styria). The young sheep figures in a seasonal tradition in that part of southern Austria as what is known as Sinn Gebäck (literally, ‘meaning bread’), when an Easter lamb baked in dough is served on the breakfast table.