Mickey Mouse is 90 and Niue goes full throttle with a full selection of coins, foils and a miniature

It’s a big anniversary for Mickey Mouse with the Dsiney mascot celebrating his 90th birthday. As a flagship event for the New Zealand Mints flagship licence, it was easy to predict there would be at least one silver coin being released to mark the event, but we got a whole lot more than that. There’s something for everyone here, with prices starting below forty dollars and heading well north of two grand.

After several two-ounce ultra high-relief silver coin releases in their Star Wars range, it was only a matter of time before a Disney coin appeared and this is obviously the right subject for it. Disappointingly, the mint has eschewed something new and gone with the iconic image of Mickey from the early movie, Steamboat Willie. It’s attractive enough, but we’ve seen it before on a couple of occasions. This high-relief strike will likely be seen as the definitive edition, however. The mintage is capped at 5,000 and the recommended price is $175.00 USD.

Also using the Steamboat Willie image are a pair of gold proof versions. The one-ounce coin features the whole scene, but the smaller quarter-ounce variant takes a far better close-up view that fills the reverse face much better.  These are not high-relief coins, but quite similar to the long-running Classic Disney series. These have mintages of 500 for the larger coin ($2,500), and 1,000 for the smaller ($620).

Coin notes are a huge thing at the New Zealand Mint in 2018, so it’s no surprise to see them here, but the addition of a one gram gold note to the usual five gram silver, is new. Both share an identical design – based around a mix of Mickey Mouse appearances through the last nine decades. Each is well packaged and can be displayed as part of a wider collection. They should be easy to pick up, with the gold having a 10,000 mintage ($140), and the silver 50,000 ($39.95).

In our view the best item released today, the Mickey Mouse figure follows some excellent DC and Star Trek miniatures that have emanated from this Auckland-based producer through 2018. Formed from approximately 150 grams of fine silver and sculpted by Alejandro Pereira Ezcurra, the figure is quite superb and comes with a display base. Just 1,000 of these will be cast and they will sell for $550.00 USD. All of the new issues in the Mickey 90th collection are available to order today and they can be bought from many of our sponsors, so please check them out.