Kicking off our first look at the Summer Launch is the debut issue in the Chess Battle series of three-ounce silver coins. This one looks to be a showcase for the many classic moves in one of the most iconic board games in history, and what better place to start than the King’s Gambit. A controversial gamble, the move was first referenced in a very early (1497) chess book, by Luis Ramírez de Lucena, called Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez. It remained a popular opening until the late 19th century, but is now rarely used by professionals.

The coin features a textured and gilded chess board at its centre, on which is shown the King’s Gambit opening move. Arranged around the board are a mix of anthropomorphised chess pieces – Kings, Queens, Knights, and Castles, each individual and from different cultures, struck in high relief, and finished with a mix of dark and light antiquing. If they can maintain this standard with the rest of the series, it’s going to be a fine one.

The coin isn’t Mint XXI’s usual issuer of Cameroon or Ghana, but instead is for Niue, so that island state’s Public Seal sites on the obverse, over a chequerboard pattern. The big-5 chess pieces sit underneath it, with small pawns marking N, S, E, and W on the edge. It looks good, and fits the theme nicely. It comes boxed with a COA, of course.

The American Bison is the first coin in this series called ‘Patterns of the World’. It looks like the idea here is to take native national styles, and apply them to objects with which that culture is associated. The first of them delves into Native American culture, and what more potent symbol of that culture can exceed that of the Bison, once so numerous that herds often contained millions of individuals. As always, colonialists screwed that up in a vain attempt to eradicate the Native American tribes, although numbers are increasing in National Parks, where they perform the important task of weeding morons from the gene pool…

The coin features a bust-type view of an adult animal, and it is entirely decorated with ultra-colourful swirling patterns of beads. Combined with a high-relief strike of the head, and a natural looking eye, and you have this quite beautiful design. There really isn’t any more to it than that, and nor does there need to be. It has shades of Powercoin’s textured fine art coins, but remains its own unique thing. Beautiful.

The obverse, one we suspect will be common to the series, has a large central pattern, much like those that you can draw with a Spirograph (remember those? Old gits like me do…). It’s done in a mix of polished and antiqued finishes. It comes in a wooden box, and with a COA.