Numiartis expands its impressive Mythical Creatures silver coin series with the classic Dragon

Just in time for the Berlin World Money Fair, Numiartis have unveiled the latest issue in their excellent Mythical Creatures series of silver coins. First appearing in 2013 with a hit Werewolf coin incorporating a marble inset moon, there have been five coins since and they’ve gradually grown in ambition since that debut. In 2015 they released a Vampire coin, then in 2016 a striking Medusa design. The following year it was the turn of the Minotaur to take centre-stage. Now its the Dragon.

Now there are fewer more popular subjects in modern numismatics than the dragon, particularly in symbolic Chinese form, but Numiartis have chosen a more realistic depiction – if there is such a thing considering it’s a dragon… This is the first time that colour has been employed to such a degree in the Mythical Creatures series, with the whole dragon receiving such attention, but the rest remains antique-finished as before. the one exception to that is part of the background.

Tianmen Mountain is located in Hunan Province around eight kilometres from the city of Zhangjiajie. At just 1518.6 metres in height, it’s hardly a giant in the region, but in 263 CE, a large piece broke away to form a huge cave over 130 metres high and 60 metres wide. It has picked up the nickname ‘Heavens Gate’ and is now a huge tourist attraction. Running up to the cave is a staircase of 999 steps. You can see a photograph of it further down and you can see it clearly represented in the background of the coin. To get back to our ‘one exception’, it’s the cave, which has been polished instead of antiqued.

REVERSEIN HAND
OBVERSEIN HAND

The design is full of dynamic motion and it makes a great change from the symbolism that usually marks Chinese-style dragons on coins. The neat little series logo, along with the coin title, are also placed on the reverse face. The obverse is the standard Palau affair, with that Oceanic island nations good-looking emblem filling most of the face.

Packaging on these is first class. We have a Minotaur coin here and the windowed gloss black box is easily one of the better ones out there. A certificate of authenticity is enclosed and the mintage is capped at just 500 pieces. Previous coins have topped out at 999 pieces, so the reduced mintage is a plus and likely linked to the much greater choice available in this market today. It’s good to see that Numiartis, and their partner CIT, are still putting out such fine designs that are able to compete so well. Available to pre-order shortly, it should ship in late May/early June.

SPECIFICATION
DENOMINATION $10 Palau
COMPOSITION 0.999 silver
WEIGHT 62.2 grams
DIMENSIONS 50.0 mm
FINISH Antique
MODIFICATIONS Colour and polished, Ultra-high-relief
MINTAGE 500
BOX / COA Yes / Yes