The big release of the three, signified by it having a separate flagship coin, is Aztec Heritage, a series of coloured, one-ounce proof silver coins. Each of them will showcase an element of the particularly fantastical Aztec mythology, primarily their nutcase pantheon of gods. The first tranche consists of three half-ounce coins, including the most famous of the Aztec gods, Quetzalcoatl.

Each of them is displayed in their most outlandish forms, complete with classic Mesoamerican stepped-pyramid architecture in the background. It’s framed with a border filled with Aztec pictograms, and a pyramid scene at the bottom. The obverse has a mix of differently decorated concentric rings, with the issue details at its centre. This is common to the series.

Topping the Aztec range is a two-ounce, antiqued, and high-relief silver coin featuring a god that dressed in flayed human skin. Called Xipe Totec, he was the god of spring, agriculture, metalworking, and warfare, so quite the portfolio. He was celebrated in a ritual called Tlacaxipehualitzli, where priests and warriors wore the flayed skins of captives until they rotted off. Sounds a riot of fun for the kids instead of Disneyland…

With so much to work with, the depiction of this god should be an interesting one, and it’s good to see POP Coins have done a great job with a piece of dynamic art that wouldn’t look out of place on a heavy metal album cover. It’s the only coin to feature a high-relief strike, aided by the increased volume of metal, and the antiqued version of the proof obverse looks particularly well done.

Is there anything cooler in architecture than the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World? Of course there isn’t. While modern structures surpass them in scale and outrageous design, these structures were built in a time before digital and electrical technology had even been imagined. Breathtaking in design and pushing every ounce of expertise at their fingertips, these construction projects were the stuff of legend, even when the Greek and Roman Empires were still in their ascendancies. We’ve written about them several times before, so we’ll concentrate on the coins.

Again, this is a one-ounce silver series, struck to a proof finish, and bearing a coloured image on the reverse face, bordered by a Greek meander pattern. Two of the seven wonders makeup the launch tranche, both of them a riot of vibrant colour, depicting the structure in its peak of glory. The obverse is a neat composition, consisting of seven bordered windows, in each of which is a small representative image of one of the Seven Wonders, set over a pattern of concentric lines. The obverse is common to the series, just as the very nicely themed packaging is.

While fine art coin series are hardly rare these days, the premise behind this range is fascinating. Instead of choosing subjects based on the period, movement or artist, the connecting theme here is theft. All the paintings showcased in Catch me if you canvas, were stolen from their museum or gallery, and of the four initial releases, three of the artworks have not been recovered, so cannot be viewed, except by the crook that stole them.

There are classic works in the initial launches, from such legends as Caravaggio, Vincent van Gogh, and Rembrandt, and no doubt there will be many more to come given the prevalence of art theft. Each one-ounce silver coin borders the artwork with a frame design, but is otherwise unencumbered by unnecessary inscriptions. The obverse is clever, showing a masked man, obviously the thief, holding a stolen artwork. Instead of a painting, the frame is filled with the Ghanaian issue details. The obverse, like the packaging, is common to the series. The 99 per design mintage is tiny.