Starting back in September 2013, the New Zealand Mint started a new range of wildlife coins called ‘Endangered Species’ with a part-coloured one-ounce silver coin depicting the Venerable Collared Lizard. A nice coin with some classic NZ Mint packaging; a miniature wooden crate so often used to transport animals illegally.

The second coin in the series marked a change in direction with the abandonment of the colouring and the change to a clean struck proof finish. Featuring everyone’s favourite short-sighted battering ram, the Black Rhino, the coin pictured a rhino in profile with it’s reflection in the water below. This trend continued with the third release, the Bengal Tiger.

This latest design moves into the primate family with another sadly endangered creature, the Mountain Gorilla. The water reflection motif continues here and it’s clearly the style moving forward, leaving the Venerable Lizard coin a bit of an anomaly.

Available at the end of April, yet agin the coin is superbly presented in the faux wooden crate, and yet again it’s a fine looking coin. Many buyers say that previous entrants in the range are superb in the hand and we can’t see this one being any different. The Bengal Tiger coin sold for $108.00 NZD and as that was only a couple of months ago, we’d expect this one to be very close to that.

MINTS DESCRIPTION

This impressive engraved 1 oz Silver coin from New Zealand Mint features a pensive Mountain Gorilla standing by a lake. Today, it is estimated that there are only 700 Mountain Gorillas remaining on Earth. These live at altitudes of up to 4,000 m in the mountains of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As humans have moved into the Gorillas’ territory, they have been pushed further up into the mountains, forcing them to endure deadly conditions. This is the fourth release in the Endangered Species coin series by New Zealand Mint and has a limited mintage of only 2,000 coins.