Fact or Fiction: Drop Bear silver coin (2024 Melbourne Coin Company)
As you know, we love a weird subject here, and what’s weirder than a raging koala dropping out of trees onto the heads of unsuspecting Aussies? The tall tale of the Drop Bear has been around for at least 50 years, and is a staple of Antipodean folklore, right down to the Australian Museum getting in on the joke.
Said to be many times the size of a koala, possibly ginger, and preferring to ambush foreigners rather than Australians, it makes you wonder why they’d invent a creature like this, when the country is full of psychotic fauna anyway! The coin is the second in the ‘Fact or Fiction’, following an unusual ‘Patchwork Platypus’ issue in 2023 – an animal thought to be a hoax, but was actually real.
Depicting a koala, looking not unlike the X-Men’s Wolverine, diving from the trees, it plays perfectly on the myth of the psycho-bear, with colour used to suggest a darkened night. The obverse features a Jody Clark effigy of King Charles III. This one-ounce coin comes boxed with a COA, and has a mintage of just 300 pieces. Available to order now, it should ship in a few weeks time.
DENOMINATION | COMPOSITION | DIMENSIONS | FINISH | MINTAGE |
$2 NZD (Niue) | 31.1 g of 0.999 silver | 40.0 mm | Proof | 300 |
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