A completer coin forms the swansong for Allcollect’s traditionally designed, Big Five Africa: Mauquoy Edition

A perennial favourite in the coin world, the African Big Five are considered the five most dangerous animals on the continent for hunting on foot, each of them quite capable of finishing off the average human being, even the herbivores. The Lion, Leopard, Rhinoceros, Elephant, and Cape Buffalo are all quite capable of killing humans and frequently do, with the Cape Buffalo, surprisingly, seeming to have a mean streak a mile wide.

We have bullion series, from South Africa appropriately enough, and a few numismatic offerings, most strikingly, the shaped coin from Bullion Exchanges, but the most artistic of them all is likely Allcollect’s impressive range. First launched in 2016, the series is produced in partnership with the Mauquoy Studio, they were strikingly original pieces, because they were not designed using CAD tools, but were handcrafted in the traditional way, in this case by Belgian artist, Beni Debacker.

Their core range consisted of five-ounce silver coins, but since that time, Allcollect have added a one-kilo silver, and one-ounce, and five-ounce gold variants to the mix. The five designs, in five-ounce silver at least, are all available now, and the producer is currently working its way through a sequel series – Big Five Asia. However, like the Royal Mint with its Queen’s Beasts range, Allcollect have now issued a ‘completer’ coin – one whose design incorporates those of the coins in the series it’s wrapping up.

All five coins to date are perfectly reproduced in miniature, complete with the ultra-high relief that was their signature, but to lift this one further out of the ordinary, there’s a superb wildlife scene filling the background field, full of neat visual touches (we like the meerkats!), and with what looks like Mt. Kilimanjaro in the far distance. We’d always imagined completer coins as being difficult to pull off while maintaining aesthetic appeal, but this is a textbook example of how to do it correctly.

The coin is antique finished, as the range it’s based on was, and presented in a floating frame with a neat themed insert. The mintage is capped at a relatively healthy 999 pieces. A really nice coin that perfectly sums up what was a highly distinctive set of coins, one that serves as a fitting end to it, or, if you missed out on what was quite an expensive set to collect, a satisfactory substitute.