Austrian Mint debuts its new Guardian Angels four-coin silver series with Michael

A new four-coin series has launched at the Austrian Mint and it’s one that features Guardian Angels. A quick look at our Coin Issue Schedules page will tell us that the mint plans to release two of these in 2017. The coin here, Michael, will ship later this month and the second, Gabriel, is due out in September. We can assume that the final pair will debut at similar times in 2018.

The Austrian Mints presentation at last weeks World Money Fair had a surprising revelation for them – colour is popular. Most of this superb mints output consists of cleanly struck and unadorned product, but the sheer popularity of the glow-in-the-dark bat last year has led them to the conclusion that colour was the key. As well as a second coin in that particular base-metal range (a tiger coin), there’s going to be a bit more colour applied to coins in the silver ones as well.

Angels are popular subjects, indeed the Archangel Michael is the only feature on Ukraine’s bullion coin and Gainesville debuted a new Guardian Angel coin last year. This is quite a generalised subject for the Austrian Mint however, who tend to, like most national mints, theme their coins around their own countries specific interests. In perhaps a nod to the tentative commitment to colour, only the proof version of this new coin (30,000 mintage) has colour applied to its obverse face. The Special Uncirculated version is devoid of colour on both sides.

A great design by mint regulars Mag. Helmut Andexlinger and Herbert Wähner, the reverse depicts Michael defeating a dragon, likely a form of Satan, and does so in a distinctive almost medieval style. You can almost see the original being rich in vibrant colour and gold, as the 13th century gothic painting from the Spanish church was. Pleasingly there are no inscriptions on this face. The obverse carries an original design with all the inscriptions in a border area presented in a cool font. The colour, just blue, is used to highlight a pattern in the background.

Struck in sterling (0.925) silver, the proof version (€44.40) and the s/unc version (€34.80) are identical in design, if not finish. Packaging varies as well, the proof comes in the small red box the Austrian Mint commonly uses, while the cheaper coin is mounted to a colourful themed card. An uncirculated copper version is also available for €10.00 and has a 130k mintage. Available to buy now, they will ship from the 22nd of this month.