It’s like a hardcopy of Google Earth! PMC debut ‘The View From Above’ with an intricate numismatic look at Vatican City from the sky
Scottsdale Mint is out to complete the 2025 EC8 bullion range in record time, with the release of the third of four pairs
T&S Coin continues along the ‘Warriors Path’ with Sohei, and there’s also Elves, and a horseman who rode under a low bridge…
B-Different coin series continues with ‘Smart’, another pointed look at resisting mass conformity in the modern world
Germania Mint’s Runes range of cast bars concludes with Vegvísir, a double-sized ‘completer’. We have an AgAuShoot.
The 2025 EC8 bullion range debuted last week, and Scottsdale Mint have ramped up the release rate with a second pair

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QUICKLOOKS

12Jun 26

Does it have a gun? You’ll wish it did because that would probably be less painful than getting stung by Paraponera clavata, more commonly known as the Bullet Ant. Native to the lowland rainforests of Central and South America, it has a fearsome reputation amongst local peoples, and many other names, including hormiga veinticuatro in Venezuela, which translates as ’24-hour ant’. This refers to, and I kid you not, the length of time the pain tends to last!

Bullet Ants can be up to 30 mm in length, and are predatory, hunting insects on the forest floor, but also having a love of nectar. They’re generally not aggressive, except when their nest, usually containing several hundred ants, is disturbed. The sting is ranked as the most painful of all insect stings, described by Justin O. Schmidt (who has a pain index), as like ‘walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel’. That was from a single animal. Imagine getting stung by scores of them, and remember, the pain lasts around a full day. A direct ancestor was found in Dominican amber dating back as far as 45 million years, so pain is obviously a handy evolutionary characteristic…

Like the original Tarantula Hawk coin, Melbourne Coins second entry into their ‘Kings of Sting’ series is a one-ounce silver coin, antique finished, with some nice restrained colour on the subject. A Bullet Ant is depicted in full, looking forward, sitting above a background of leafy forest floor. A title bar crosses the coin nearer the bottom, and the obverse features the usual effigy of King Charles III, bordered by the issue details. A cool coin, these look great in hand compared to the images here.

DENOMINATION	COMPOSITION	DIMENSIONS	FINISH	MINTAGE
$2 NZD (Niue)	31.1 g of 0.999 silver	40.0 mm	Antique, Colour	300

where to buy page

09Jun 26

Since its 2021 debut, the Lithuanian Mint has regularly added new issues to its ‘Fairy Tales’ range of one-ounce silver coins, usually two or three of them. This talented producer has just issued the 15th in the series to date, and they’re stepping it up in the design stakes with a neat new border frame.

Thumbelina is the fairy story featured on this first 2026-dated entry, and is based on a work by the famous Danish author, Hans Christian Andersen, first published in 1835. It tells the story of a tiny girl’s adventures, and her battles to fight off getting married to a succession of toads, moles, and cockchafers. She eventually finds happiness by wedding an equally tiny flower-fairy prince. A weird story, as most fairy tales are, the task of encapsulating it fell to Audronė Kalinauskienė.

The scene on the coin depicts Thumbelina in the house of a mouse, the lady mouse (did I really just write that…) is in her kitchen, baking bread and facing Thumbelina. It’s full of charming visual cues, like mushrooms on a line and seeds looking huge in a sack. It’s all bounded by a raised wooden branch frame, complete with acorns and pine cones, giving it the appearance of looking into a hole in the tree to witness the scene within. The obverse has a standard relief flipped copy of it, inside which are the usual issue details, in this case for Niue.

After losing the custom packaging for the last issue, this one brings it back with a brightly themed cylindrical box. The series as a whole has suffered from a lack of consistency when it comes to presentation, but this is neat, and suits the coin. Available to order now, 1,000 will be struck.

DENOMINATION	COMPOSITION	DIMENSIONS	FINISH	MINTAGE
$1 NZD (Niue)	31.1 g of 0.999 silver	40.0 mm	Antique, Colour	1,000

where to buy page

02Jun 26

Legendary Warriors, a 15-coin series of two-ounce silver coins by T&S Coin, in partnership with North Carolina based US dealer, Pinehurst Coins, has received its penultimate issue with the release of Arminius. These coins feature famous historical warriors from around the world, in antiqued high-relief with gilded highlights. The series has a decent mix of subjects, and a high standard of design. Pinehurst offer one-ounce bullion coin variants, which are struck in the US.

Arminius was a Germanic chieftain who served in the Roman Army in other parts of the Empire. However, he was sent back to Germania to help pacify the tribes, but while there, however, he secretly plotted with the Germanic tribes to revolt. In 9 CE, he persuaded the Roman governor, Varus, to take three Roman legions into the Teutoburg Forest, where they were ambushed and wiped out in what is widely considered one of Rome’s most comprehensive defeats. It effectively ended Roman expansion east of the Rhine.

Rather than go on about it here, you can read more about it in our comprehensive Coin Series Profile, where all these coins are featured. It’s available to pre-order now.

DENOMINATION	COMPOSITION	DIMENSIONS	FINISH	MINTAGE
$5 NZD (Niue)	62.2 g of 0.999 silver	45.0 mm	Antique w/gilding	500

where to buy page

18May 26

The tsunami of releases from Mint of MK and Silver Pours in the realm of micro-coins continues, and so does our quest to keep track of them for the collectors among you. For the unaware, these are tiny coins, way smaller than the 0.5 gram minigold and usually a light as 1/1000oz. You can buy coins in different metals, and while there are some silver issues, gold is the most popular, followed by platinum and palladium. Each coin comes mounted in a themed credit-card shaped blisterpack, so they’re easy to collect and store.

The release rate is high for these, so we obviously can’t cover them all, or indeed want to given they’re all fundamentally similar. As a result, we have four of our Coin Series Profiles set up, one for each metal, that collect most, but not all (we’re still waiting for a batch of images from Q4/2025), or the releases to date, and we keep them constantly updated.

You can see the various designs on our Coin Series Profiles page, so just click Liberia on the country filter at the top of the page, and you will see the four profiles laid out for you to choose to view. There’s been a lot of new ones, some 22 in total, since our last update, so take a look if this is your thing, or you want to start collecting on a strict budget.

DENOMINATION	COMPOSITION	DIMENSIONS	FINISH	MINTAGE

where to buy page

LATEST SITE UPDATES

06/06/2026: COIN SERIES PROFILE UPDATE The Silver Pours micro-coin guides for platinum, gold, and palladium have all had multiple new additions to them.

05/06/2026: BULLION SALES GRAPHS UPDATED – The United States Mint and Perth Mint bullion sales numbers have been brought up to the end of May.

03/06/2026: COIN SERIES PROFILE UPDATE We’ve split our guide to the EC8 Scottsdale Mint series into two, with one focused on bullion, and one on the coloured range. The 8th series is added.

31/05/2026: BULLION SERIES PROFILE UPDATE The Germania World bullion summary has been completely refreshed, and new coins have been added to make it current.

29/05/2026: COIN SERIES PROFILE UPDATE The Tudor Beasts tenth proof release has been added, as well as the ninth bullion version. The profile has also been visually refreshed to our new style.

08/04/2026: THEMATIC GUIDE UPDATE We’ve split the Agoro/NZ Mint Star Wars coin guide into two sections as it’s grown excessive in size. The silver foils now have their own profile.

LATEST SITE NEWS

Early May 2026 catch-up of updates to site guides, profiles and more

Mik Woodgate2026-05-08T23:42:47+01:00May 8th, 2026|

Early May 2026 catch-up of updates to site guides, profiles and more I've been working on updates over the last few days, in my quest to refresh the older guides to a more common look, which I'm finally happy with. Some of them are shown [...]

March 2026: Catching up with lots of updates to guides and profiles

Mik Woodgate2026-03-16T15:47:38+00:00March 16th, 2026|

March 2026: Catching up with lots of updates to guides and profiles No news today, as I've been updating guides and coin profiles for a few days, and it's a never-ending job as usual. Our Coin Series Profiles, Bullion Profiles, and Thematic Guides are useless unless [...]