We’re starting off with the sad news that The Dragonology series of two-ounce silver coins has now concluded, with the release of the sixth coin. This has been a superb series, featuring dragons of lore, all accompanied by a beautiful woman, the latter exquisitely coloured. Each has a colour theme, carried over to the eye on the common obverse, the only thing that differs on it.

To conclude the series, we have this Stonegaze Basilisk, a serpentine dragon named for its ability to turn people into stone when you lock eyes with it. Our lady seems impervious to its gaze, despite the proximity, and the exuberance of the basilisk. Most of the beasts in this series have been relatively restrained, but this one seems quite active in comparison. It’s an impressive end to a very impressive set of six coins, one which we really should gather up into one of our Coin Series Profiles. Boxed with a COA, it has a mintage capped at 500.

With Mint XXI having such a mastery of ancient mythology on coins, as series like The Great Greek Mythology, and Road to Valhalla prove, it’s of little surprise that Divine Faces of the Sun is another top-quality offering. It launched in 2020 with a terrific Amun Ra design, and since then, this three-ounce silver series has given us Amaterasu, Helios, Vishnu, and Dazhbog. The sixth entrant is an old favourite, the Greek god, Apollo.

Apollo, as a god, has been well covered here already, so let’s stick to the coin design. These coins are antique finished, something that is almost de rigeur in mythology coins, and have some gilded highlights, but the signature feature of this series has always been the use of amber. The golden yellow fossilised tree resin, has always fascinated me for its importance in palaeontology, but it’s also a beautiful material for decoration, which is how the mint utilises it. Polish amber, part of wider regional deposits known collectively as ‘Baltic Gold’, is used here, which may date back as far as 56 million years.

For the coin, it decorates the bottom of Apollo’s lyre, and behind it, you can see a representation of Apollo in the Ancient Greek style. It’s a fine looking design, perhaps even superior to the one in the mint’s epic 36-coin GGM series. The obverse is attractive, which is basically a common one to the series, except for the slim border pattern by the edge, which is unique to each issue. Boxed, and with a COA, it’s another fine release in this very pretty series.