Love: Under the Sheets, is a unique numismatic look at a couple’s quiet tender moments

We like the unusual here. No surprise when you realise how many coins we not only see, but have to write about, and our biggest enemy is repetition. Carpathian mint’s latest certainly fits the bill. We do see love and romance coins, of course, with the bigger producers like the Mint of Poland, the Perth Mint, and CIT, all having annual releases, usually featuring a heart or a dove. Mint XXI also has a cool series based around the famed Kama Sutra, but that’s less about romance, and more about sex.

The Carpathian Mint’s latest is a classic rimless, two-ounce, high-relief silver coin, with an antique finish. The design is pretty unique, however. It depicts an embracing couple almost fully covered by a bedsheet, and the main draw of the coin’s design is how that sheet is textured over that couple. It’s a good attempt at showing something likely quite difficult to achieve on a coin. Some realism has been sacrificed to ramp up the surface detail, which is far enough, as it keeps it more interesting. The way her hand grips the under sheet is particularly well realised.

The obverse is also unusual, although less successful, in our view. The idea is excellent, with the hands perhaps hinting at Adam and Eve, and we’d like to see that have more prominence over the box below it. All together, it’s a nice idea for a coin, and they’ve done a good job bringing it to reality. We’d certainly be interested in seeing photographs of the finished coins, and we’ll put those up if we get them.

As always, the coin is boxed with a Certificate of Authenticity, and the mintage is capped at 500 pieces. It should be available to order now, with shipping at the end of the year. The first in a new series looking at the emotional relationship between a couple, future issues will continue the concept, but with different emotions. As we said, a unique subject, and the realisation is also very different, with only CIT’s ‘Trapped’ series even coming close, and that’s about vampires. We’re intrigued to see where Carpathian Mint takes it.

SPECIFICATION
DENOMINATION 2,000 Francs CFA (Cameroon)
COMPOSITION 0.999 silver
WEIGHT 62.2 grams
DIMENSIONS 45.0 mm
FINISH Antique
MODIFICATIONS Ultra high-relief
MINTAGE 500
BOX / C.O.A. Yes / Yes

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