Rogue’s Island Mint joins the food coin genre with the launch of a cleverly shaped donut coin

Of all the genres in modern numismatics, perhaps food has brought the most unusual ideas to the party. We’ve had scratch-and-sniff pizza, a bowl of instant noodles, Haribo Bears, and a $130,000 fried egg, for example, and now Rogue’s Island Mint (RIM) has added their own take on the concept with a coin to make cops, and Homer Simpson, drool.

Doughnuts (donuts) have never been more popular than the last 15 years. The rise of Krispy Kreme, and Dunkin’ Donuts, amongst others, has meant they’re a ubiquitous sight in shopping areas around much of the globe, bought by the dozen, and with a range of flavours and styles that make the head, and sometimes the stomach, spin.

In honour of this cultural icon, RIM have launched a donut coin complete with pink icing and sprinkles. The shaping is quite impressive, although hard to discern in most of these images. You can see it best in the second image below. Rather than just have a donut reproduced flatly, it’s depicted ‘diving’ into the coin, enhancing the three-dimensional look of it. It’s a neat use of perspective that has many other potential uses for other subjects.

The obverse is flat, with the emblem of Cameroon sitting in a space created by a bite out of the ‘donut’. There’s a hole through the middle of the coin. As we said at the beginning, food coins are unusual, and often gimmicky, so they’re aimed at the gift market. As RIM says, a great gift for a cop, or for Father’s Day. It comes in some neat retro packaging and has a mintage of 999 pieces. Available to order now, we’ve seen it at a few of our sponsors.