Donald Duck is celebrating 85 quacking years at the top with a new precious metal rangee

Disney has a seemingly endless supply of characters known throughout the world, so it’s fairly easy to find one that has a major anniversary coming up. Outside of the companies iconic rodent, who celebrated his 90th birthday last August, it falls to Donald Duck to do ambassadorial duties in 2019. As before, the New Zealand Mint has prepared a full range of offerings to tempt the collectors of precious metal coins, and more.

Topping the bill is a two-ounce high relief silver coin depicting a scene from the 1939 short, ‘Donald’s Penguin’. A charming design, this will have obvious appeal to the classicist. It’s good to see something original as we felt last years rehashing of the Steamboat Willie design wa a bit lazy of them. Packaging is beautifully done and very classy. This one would be greatly appreciated by a fan, we’re sure. The mintage is set at 5,000 and the rrp is $175.00 USD.

The gold pair consists of a 1oz and a ¼oz coin carrying identical designs, although a little cropped compared to the silver version. Mintages are 500 and 1,000 respectively and the packaging is understated, but neat enough. Like the silver coin, these have a proof finish and are also available now. The price on the smaller coin remains at $620,00, although the larger has seen a $100 rise to $2,600.00. With gold having risen lately, that’s hardly surprising.

As a major producer of coin notes, we were expecting one here, but no gold this time, just a 5 gram silver. These are fantastic gifts for non-coin collectors as they offer a large canvas to work with, yet remain eminently affordable. The design is an attractive mix of images showing the quirky character through his many decades of history. As we said, at under $40, eminently affordable, although not one to convince stackers on the value front, of course.

Last, but certainly not least, is a miniature that isn’t strictly part of the 85th anniversary range and was released a couple of weeks ago. The NZ Mint’s miniature range has encompassed not only Disney, but Star Trek and DC Comics as well (although strangely, no Star Wars). For us, and I say this as someone who has no particular love of Disney, it is the Disney sculpts that really shine, We’ve seen, and been impressed by, the first two in hand, but this one looks quite sublime. A perfect representation of this super-iconic animated legend. You’re going to have to find $550.00 for one of the 1,000 being cast, but the Disney nut is going to be very pleased with what they got in return.

Everything is available now directly from the mint, or from dealers around the world, including several of our sponsors.