Star Wars Day – Silver foils go super-sized with A New Hope movie poster coin

The recent flurry of activity around the new coin note format was initiated by Coin Invest Trust, but there’s no doubt that the New Zealand Mint are now the biggest proponents on the fledgling format. With series based on Star Treks original series, Disney Princesses, Justice League and Star Wars A New Hope, it’s clear the mint sees great potential here. Whether they’re right or not will become clear when 2018 is over as the mint has further plans through the year to increase choice.

First of those is an ambitious new interpretation that takes the standard 150 x 70 mm format and expands it many-fold to a capacious 262 x 170 mm in size, much like CIT’s impressive historical map coin issued last year. With weight increasing from five grams to thirty-five, there’s clearly potential to showcase artwork in a more impressive light. The mint has chosen its flagship Star Wars format to do the honours and more specifically, the hit poster series.

The original Tom Jung art, based on an original concept by the Hildebrandt brothers, is used again and we have to say it looks an impressive piece. At a push perhaps, we’d maybe like to have seen one of the many other A New Hope posters for a change, but we understand why this was chosen. Despite the size, this remains a coin and carries a small effigy of Queen Elizabeth II on the obverse, but we can’t imagine anyone being too interested in it. These are all about the display and the acrylic frame they come in is designed to make doing that a doddle.

A fine centrepiece to a memorabilia collection, the price of $130.00 is hardly excessive in that market and the 10,000 mintage means early availability should be easy enough. These have been announced today but won’t start to be available until next after next weekend and they can be bought from the mint or from dealers worldwide, including a few of our advertisers.