Since its 2021 debut, the Lithuanian Mint has regularly added new issues to its ‘Fairy Tales’ range of one-ounce silver coins, usually two or three of them. This talented producer has just issued the 15th in the series to date, and they’re stepping it up in the design stakes with a neat new border frame.

Thumbelina is the fairy story featured on this first 2026-dated entry, and is based on a work by the famous Danish author, Hans Christian Andersen, first published in 1835. It tells the story of a tiny girl’s adventures, and her battles to fight off getting married to a succession of toads, moles, and cockchafers. She eventually finds happiness by wedding an equally tiny flower-fairy prince. A weird story, as most fairy tales are, the task of encapsulating it fell to Audronė Kalinauskienė.

The scene on the coin depicts Thumbelina in the house of a mouse, the lady mouse (did I really just write that…) is in her kitchen, baking bread and facing Thumbelina. It’s full of charming visual cues, like mushrooms on a line and seeds looking huge in a sack. It’s all bounded by a raised wooden branch frame, complete with acorns and pine cones, giving it the appearance of looking into a hole in the tree to witness the scene within. The obverse has a standard relief flipped copy of it, inside which are the usual issue details, in this case for Niue.

After losing the custom packaging for the last issue, this one brings it back with a brightly themed cylindrical box. The series as a whole has suffered from a lack of consistency when it comes to presentation, but this is neat, and suits the coin. Available to order now, 1,000 will be struck.