Bambi, one of the all-time great animated movies is 75 years old and the NZ Mint celebrates

Widely considered one of the finest of the early animated movies by Disney, Bambi tells the story of the early life of a fawn. Because it was released in the middle of the Second World War, it wasn’t a box-office success on its initial cinema run, but subsequent runs have placed the film firmly in the category of movie classics. It’s a time of Disney anniversaries and the New Zealand Mint have already commemorated many of them.  The 80th anniversary of Donald Duck, Daisy Duck’s 75th, Scrooge McDuck, the 75th anniversary of Dumbo, and the 65th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland have all had fine coins issued for them.

Bambi is now 75 years old and the NZ Mint has chosen an incredibly iconic image from the movie for the design. Bambi, a butterfly on his tail, watched by Thumper and Flower, is an image firmly associated with the movie and a great choice for the coin. The movie name is inscribed above the artwork, along with the composition and copyright information, the latter pair in a small font, fortunately. The obverse is a standard one for the mints Niue issues – the effigy of QEII by Ian Rank Broadley along with the coins issue details.

The same two formats that have been used before are also in use here. A ¼ oz gold coin and a 1 oz silver are sensible choices, popular and relatively affordable in the case of the gold. We’ve always been impressed that the mint has kept these free of colour in the past and this design clearly benefits from the clean strike, doubley so for the gold which we feel rarely looks better with colour.

Both are packaged in a fine quality wooden box, usually reserved for the mints gold output but also employed for the silver in this case. The gold ¼oz will retail for US$620 and the silver for US$85. A 1,000 gold coins will be struck, with the silver reaching 10,000. Another fine release in what has become the finest selection of Disney coins we think has ever been released.

2017 BAMBI 75TH ANNIVERSARY PROOF COINS

Bambi is a 1942 American animated film directed by David Hand (supervising a team of sequence directors), produced by Walt Disney and based on the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten. The film was released by RKO Radio Pictures on August 13, 1942, and is the fifth Disney animated feature film.

The main characters are Bambi, a white-tailed deer; his parents (the Great Prince of the forest and his unnamed mother); his friends Thumper (a pink-nosed rabbit); and Flower (a skunk); and his childhood friend and future mate, Faline. For the movie, Disney took the liberty of changing Bambi’s species into a white-tailed deer from his original species of roe deer, since roe deer are not native to North America, and the white-tailed deer is more widespread in the United States. The film received three Academy Award nominations: Best Sound (Sam Slyfield), Best Song (for “Love Is a Song” sung by Donald Novis) and Original Music Score.

In June 2008, the American Film Institute presented a list of its “10 Top 10″—the best ten films in each of ten classic American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Bambi placed third in animation. In December 2011, the film was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Source: Wikipedia

PACKAGING AND OBVERSE

SPECIFICATION

NAME 2017 BAMBI 75TH 2017 BAMBI 75TH
DENOMINATION $2 New Zealand $25 New Zealand
COMPOSITION 0.999 silver 0.9999 gold
WEIGHT 31.1 grams 7.78 g
DIAMETER 40.00 mm 22.00 mm
FINISH Proof Proof
MODIFICATIONS None None
MINTAGE 10,000 1,000
BOX / COA Yes / Yes Yes / Yes