Obviously lots of little stories don’t warrant a full, and often time-consuming post, so hopefully, every Sunday we’ll do a little news nugget round-up of the week with all the bits of news we accumulate. This is the first one and is a mix of new coin updates, mint reports and variants. No doubt the variety will increase in future and we can post a lot of bits we’d normally have missed or not found the time to get around to. Enjoy.
EXCLUSIVE: CIT’S EVO OF LIFE
Will be a trilobite next. A surprise at last years ANA coin show was the launch of Evolution of Life by Coin Invest Trust (left). The coin, shown far left, depicted an ammonite fossil in rock, all in fine silver with rose gold gilding. A huge hit, it’s no surprise a sequel would appear, or that others would copy the idea.
The Mint of Poland released one recently (right), likely a commission, that depicted a trilobite. We’re massive Mint of Poland fans, but this one didn’t blow us away to be honest, so great news that this amazing creature is getting the CIT treatment. We’d guess, the ANA show in mid August will reveal all.
LAST NORSE GODS COINS OUT
The nine-coin series of antique-finish Norse Gods coins struck by BH Mayer have appeared. We’ll add them to our Coin Series Profile when we get better high-resolution images of the pair. One depicts the goddess Sif, wife of Thor, and the other Freyr, one of the most important of them all, alongside his pet pig Bacon Sandwich (probably).
A nice series, these two wrap up the nine coins in the set. These will start appearing in lots of places shortly, Powercoin being first out of the gate.
DISNEY JUGGERNAUT ROLLS ON
The New Zealand Mints Disney license carries on in just 24 hours time with the release of a new range of coins featuring one of the media conglomerates biggest hits in recent years, Frozen. To say the movie has been a success is something of an understatement, not just at the box office where it pulled in a quite staggering $1.3b,but in the merchandise market where, despite the movie having launched 3 years ago, product still sells out quicker than a politician to a lobby group.
We’ll have full details up tomorrow afternoon. WIth a new movie due next year, we can’t imagine these will be the last coins we’ll see.
ROYAL CANADIAN MINT REPORTS RECORD 2015 SALES
The RCM has fnally published its 2015 report and it looks like a wealth of good news for the North American mint. Revenues are up a very healthy 21.7% on a disappointing 2014, to almost $3b, although profits were up just 2.9% on the back of them, 13% of the drop due to a pre-impairment rather than operating costs.
Circulating coin production rose 102.3% to 350m, gold bullion coin sales, mostly Maples, up a huge 34.8% to 953,000 ounces, and silver bullion coin sales up to a record 34.3m ounces, a rise of 17.9% from the 29.1m units produced in 2014.
On the numismatic front, revenue almost broke $200m, with gold numismatic sales up 28.9% compared to just 13.1% for silver. Of the 243 numismatic products issued in 2015, 72 were sell-outs before the years end; an impressive achievement. Numismatic revenues have doubled since 2011, a figure made all the more impressive by how flat the spot price has been over much of that period.
C.I.T. EXPANDS GREAT TEA RACE RANGE
One of our favourite coins from this award-winning producers WMF Berlin releases was this very impressive piece showcasing their new technology, SmartMinting. Featuring the Great Tea Race of 1866, the strike displays a level of high relief quite extraordinary in ambition for their size. We saw a full range of sizes at the World Money Fair in February, but CIT chose to launch one of the biggest of them, the 2oz (62g), to show off just how much relief is possible, and the ¼oz (8g) to show what was possible with a small amount of metal.
Both have been hits and having bought one personally, I can attest to the excellence of the 2oz coin. CIT have now expanded the line-up to include 1oz and ½oz variants, so there’s now a good variety to suit more budgets. Very highly recommended, especially the 1oz coin which we felt was the best compromise between cost and design.
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