Exclusive! Carpathian Mint debuts ‘Memory’, its first coin in a series looking at the end of human civilisation

Isn’t it strange how one of the things we find the most interesting is our own demise? Numerous TV shows like The Walking Dead, Westworld, and The 100, movies like Mad Max, Armageddon, and Wall-E, as well as countless novels, all deal with the end of humanity. The imagination expended on the topic is quite amazing. Everything from alien invasion, natural disaster, disease, war, and the breakdown of civilisation, are all popular tropes in what is a strange quirk of human nature.

It goes without saying that the coin world will get a piece of the action, and the Carpathian Mint have, today, debuted the first in a new series with the title, ‘End of Humanity’. Certainly a rich source of inspiration, the first issue, is a 3D render by Ukrainian artist Yuriy Tikhonovsky, responsible for some outstanding coin designs over the last few years, from artwork by the Carpathian Mint and the take on the subject is very inventive.

Set in a post-apocalyptic city, devoid of humans, it depicts a child’s robotic companion, standing atop a wrecked School Bus, looking forlornly at a child’s stuffed toy floating on the unchecked floodwaters that have engulfed the city. Nature has already started to reclaim the city, with plant life appearing everywhere amidst the devastation. In a nice touch, the coin’s title is integrated into the scene on a pair of road signs, rather than just being inscribed over the whole design. If any other creature went extinct, they’d leave behind a few consequences, and little else. When we go, we leave behind a wrecked planet…

The foreground scene is picked out with colour, the rest antique-finished. The obverse is also antique-finished, and depicts what could be a cause for the destruction of human society, nuclear weapons. Tellingly, the hand that flipped the switch is that of a robot, controlled by an Artificial Intelligence, to suggest that, perhaps, we’d created a system to help run our society, which then decided it would be better off without us. Shades of Skynet and the Terminators.

This is a classic two-ounce silver coin, rimless, and filled with high-relief. It’s one of our favourite formats for good reason, offering a balanced compromise between having enough metal to create all the detail needed, and keeping the cost of the coin sensible. A clever and thought-provoking debut, we wonder where it will go from here. Maybe humanity hasn’t completely disappeared, like the cosmic cockroach we undoubtedly are, or has our own hubris finally overcome us? Available to order from today, the mintage is capped at 500 pieces, and the coin comes boxed with a Certificate of Authenticity.