Despite the Gods of Olympus series from the Perth Mint getting all the attention, the New Zealand Mint have quietly continued releasing their own series of two-ounce coins featuring Ancient Greek Gods. Now they’ve issued the fifth and final coin in the series and this one depicts Apollo, the god of light and the sun, truth and prophecy, healing, plague, music, poetry, and more. Brother of Artemis, and son of Zeus and Leto, Apollo is one of the most important of the Greek and Roman pantheon of gods.

The first coin in the series debuted back in September 2013, pre-empting the Perth series by almost four months, and featured Zeus. This was followed by Aphrodite in January 2014, and then by Poseidon and Athena later in 2014. Each coin is displayed in a nice, heavy temple-style package that can be stood alongside each other to form a temple facia.

These are actually nice coins, beautifully struck, although not always the most dynamic of designs. They follow the classical look and that’s not a bad thing at all. Despite the similarity in subject matter, these aren’t a competitor to the Perth series and are much more likely to appeal to students of the original subject matter than their more stylistic Australian cousins. I have a Zeus coin here and have seen Aphrodite and Poseidon, and all are of a very high quality, so don’t overlook these just because they aren’t the next big hit in numismatic circles. We’re not sure if the mint has plans to follow Gods of Ancient Greece with another series, but we’d like to see something based around the more interesting Norse mythology personally. We’ll see what’s coming in Berlin later this week.

MINTS DESCRIPTION