One of our favourite silver bullion coins of 2014, indeed of modern times, the Wedge-Tailed Eagle coin designed by John Mercanti for the Perth Mint had its debut last year. First released as high-relief silver and gold coins with mintages of 10,000 and 1,000 respectively back in January 2014, they followed up with a standard silver proof and a fantastic five-ounce high relief coin last May. This year will almost certainly see new releases of most, or all of those.

The bullion coin, while not as impressive as the completely sublime High-Relief versions, remains a beautiful piece, and if last years mintage limit is repeated, a relatively rare one by bullion standards.

As before, GovMint have exclusive rights to the coin outside of Australia and have repeated the annoying trend of slabbing the entire run of coins. Taking away the choice by slabbing them all is extremely frustrating and stops people buying and grading their own, with the potential benefit of having a coin appreciate in value because it’s a 70-grade example. In effect, these coins have been pre-appreciated and the money taken by the dealer with the result that as an investment coin, they’re a bust. As all three grades from 2014 are still available in reasonable quantity and as this low mintage bullion coin was one of the hottest of last year, it’s fair to say that many collectors feel the same way we do.

Just like last year, GovMint are to be selling the coin in three grades, all of which are slabbed by PCGS. Graded at MS70 they’re priced at $99.95 and at grade MS69, $49.95. A third ‘grade’, Gem BU, sells for $29.95 and would appear to just be a good clean coin in a slab. If you want a tube of 25, or even a single encapsulated coin, you’re currently out of luck. Each coin again comes with the internal label signed by the designer of the coin, John Mercanti, the former Chief Engraver of the US Mint who also designed the iconic and ubiquitous American Silver Eagle bullion coin.

Last year, 10% of the 50,000 mintage was sold by Australian dealer Ainslie Bullion but we’re currently unsure when or if they will be the dealer selling them this year. We understand that any Australian issued coin has to have 10% of its mintage sold in Australia, thus explaining why GovMint don’t get all the coins to themselves. This would indicate that the same would be the case this year, but GovMint do not list a mintage for the 2015 release, so how many an Australian dealer would get is unclear at present. We’ll try to find out.