Located in Paris, Art Mint are building up a reputation as producers of some innovative and unusual coin designs in their just over a decade in business. Our first brush with them came with the very well recieved Stradivarius: Lady Blunt coin, the first coin to have a varnished-wood inlay. The wood was cleverly used to represent the back of one of the masters finest musical instruments, the Lady Blunt violin.

From there we came to the Halloween glow-in-the-dark coin that again, cleverly used the technique to great effect with a glowing halloween pumpkin. For some reason we seem to have missed their excellent Versailles: Hall of Mirrors coin. This had a combination of proof, antique and coloured finishes to recreate a view along the Hall of Mirrors room in the Palace of Versailles. Their last coin was also their most conventional, a tribute to Ayrton Senna that had just 179 pieces available for sale outside of Brazil.

This latest release again pushes off in a new direction with the debut of what the mint terms as ‘Chromadepth’ technology. A technique that takes advantage of one of the photographers biggest enemies, chromatic abberration, Chromadepth allows anyone wearing a pair of 3D glasses to give the coins reverse image a great sense of three dimensions. Having tried it in Berlin, we can say it’s a striking effect.

The coins unusual artwork is designed to enhance the effect as intensely as possible, yet remain perfectly designed in 2D as well. The image isn’t distorted or compromised for those not wearing the glasses, although obviously you won’t see the 3D effect.

Available in early April, it comes in a neat box designed to hold the specs, and should sell for around the price of the Halloween and Senna coins. With unusual releases like these, Art Mint are standing alongside Numiscollect and CIT in trying out new numismatic ideas, something we’re all for here.

MINTS DESCRIPTION

ChromaDepth 3D is a patented system that produces a stereoscopic effect based upon differences in the diffraction of color through a special prism-like holographic film fitted into the glasses. ChromDepth 3D glasses purposely exacerbate chromatic aberration and give the illusion of colors taking up different positions in space, with red being in front, and blue being in back. This works particularly well with the sky, sea or grass as a background, and red objects in the foreground.

With our ChromaDepth 3D glasses, any media piece can be given a 3D effect as long as the color spectrum is put into use with the foreground being in red, and the background dark. From front to back, the scheme follows the visible light spectrum, from red to orange, yellow, green and blue. As a result, ChromaDepth 3D works best with artificially produced or enhanced pictures, since the color indicates the depth. ChromaDepth 3D contains depth information in one image, which eliminates the ghosting seen in other schemes when one attempts to view them without 3D glasses. Thus, ChromaDepth images can be viewed comfortably and legibly without glasses, even though the 3D effect will not be perceivable without them.

Created by designer Renato Saes, the special coin features the coloured artistic work printed with Chromadepth 3D technology. The coin’s reverse side shows the nominal value, an image of the Queen Elizabeth II with the inscription ‘Elizabeth II’, the name of the issuer, ‘Niue Island’ and the year of issue, 2015.

The coins are strictly limited to only 699 pieces worldwide and special packaging has been designed for the magnificent Choromadepth 3D issue. It comes with a special 3D glass and original Certificate of Authenticity.