It was a Canadian dinosaur coin that started my interest in coins some years ago, so any new release from the mint is always of interest here. It helps that large parts of Canada, particularly Alberta, are home to some quite extraordinary fossils, both in quality and quantity, and the mint has always been welcoming of new discoveries.

Fortunately, those new discoveries are sometimes quite spectacular, in this case a new Tyrannosaurid species named Thanatotheristes degrootorum, although it may yet be that it’s reclassified as a Daspletosaurus (another Tyrannosaurid). The RCM has wasted no time on getting the toothy behemoth on a coin and has produced an attractive piece, concentrating, as we particularly like here, on the fossil rather than the ‘fleshed-out’ animal.

It helps that Julius Csotonyi, a very talented paleoartist, has done the honours, with verification from the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology. This is a similar approach used by the Royal Mint for their recent ‘Mary Anning’ collection, and works exceptionally well. The coin is a matte proof one-ounce silver piece with black Rhodium plating and a 7,500 mintage. Available now for $109.95 CAD, we hope this is the first of a series, rather than a one-off.