The first coin showcases the famous ‘boot’ shape of the Italian Peninsula, sticking out into the Mediterranean Sea, to create one of the most distinctive countries on Earth. A marvellous nation, rich in history, art, and food (and Monica Bellucci!!), Italy is also one of the biggest economies, and continues to play an outsized role in European culture, manufacturing, and defence.

The coin seems simple enough, featuring a topographical map of Italy, beautifully coloured over the high-relief, and if you know anything about the geography of Italy, you’ll know it’s a mountainous country (a volcanic one, as well), all reproduced here. Taking lessons learned from their Topography series, there’s also depth to the strike, with the sea around the land treated to a tinted enamel finish, letting us see the detailing on the sea bed.

It’s all pretty impressive, with obvious care and attention taken to get things just right. The obverse is a bog-standard effigy design, sadly, but an inevitable compromise with so much relief on the reverse face. A fine release, I’d like to see more of these. The United Kingdom would be a good choice, as would New Zealand and Japan.

Yellowstone National Park, established in 1872, is the first national park in the U.S. and is primarily located in Wyoming over 9,000 km². It sits atop a volcanic hotspot, creating a dramatic landscape with over half of the world’s geysers, including the famous Old Faithful, and numerous hot springs like the Grand Prismatic Spring. The park is a vast wilderness, home to diverse wildlife such as grizzly bears, wolves, bison, and elk. Its unique ecosystem includes canyons, rivers, and forests, making it a globally significant natural wonder. It’s also home to a potential super-volcano.

The coin is the third unique design in this series, a spiritual successor to the 7 Peaks range, except taking the relief into the surface, rather than the typical raised profile. We’ve had the Grand Canyon, and Hawaii so far, and Yellowstone, another US legend, makes for the most complex design to date. The intricate landscape of Yellowstone is brought to life, with lakes and valleys suitably coloured with some fine shading. A simple, but wonderful concept, perfectly realised.

The obverse is a common one to the series, and features the Dan Thorne effigy of King Charles III over a pattern of topographical contour lines. Like the coin surface, you’ll have to dig a little deeper to pick one up, as it’s five-ounces. If the first two issues are a reliable indicator, we should be seeing a kilogram version, with an enormous 100 mm diameter, coming along in early 2026. Geology, and the natural world, are passions of mine, so this one resonates especially well with me, but as a numismatic for the general collector, it remains a phenomenal piece.

Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca citadel located in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru, on a 2,430-metre mountain ridge. The site was constructed around 1450, during the reign of Pachacuti and his successor, Túpac Inca Yupanqui. Abandoned a century later, it was unknown to the Spanish during their conquest, and was rediscovered in 1911 by Hiram Bingham. The Incas built the estate using polished dry-stone walls, and its three primary structures are the Inti Watana, the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows. The site was declared a Peruvian Historical Sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.

Machu Picchu is also the second in CIT’s Bucket List series, following last year’s Santorini coin, which takes us on a world tour of all the places people would most like to visit. The design features a straight reproduction of this incredible site, well realised in smartminted high-relief. Contrast between structures and environment is created by colouring the latter, and it all works well. It would be nice if there were a more prominent focal point, but that’s hardly a negative when it simply matches the original site. This is easily the best Machu Picchu coin we’ve seen.

The obverse is one that debuted on the Santorini coin, so obviously common to the series. Overall, a fine showcase of one of the world’s most legendary archaeological sites.