Pirates of the Caribbean joins the burgeoning limited mintage bullion coin market with ‘The Black Pearl’

It seems the New Zealand Mint hasn’t finished with shoe-horning its many licenced franchises into its widening bullion coin range, and the latest to join the roster is one of the former big guns of the movie world, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’. Fronted by Johnny Depp and a big cast of fine actors, the series was hugely popular, if perhaps sticking around a little too long.

The coin is quite timely, tapping into a renewed interest in the pirate world and coming hot on the heels of the rounding up of the Royal Australian Mint’s superb ‘Australian Shipwrecks’ series, and joining the APMEX/Perth Mint ‘Black Flag’ range, which recently had a fine new addition.

This one looks okay, not to the level of the two aforementioned series, with a fairly static image, although the Captain Jack Sparrow ‘rock’ is a neat touch. You have to bear in mind how controlling the movie companies are, so artists rarely get a truly free hand. The obverse is the usual plain effigy of Queen Elizabeth II, but that’s no surprise.

Same two formats as usual, a gold and a silver, both weighing in at a troy ounce, and both with pretty tight mintage limits. The 0.999 silver coin tops out at 15,000 pieces, with the gold stopping at just 250 coins. This one is exclusive to EMK in Germany, and you can buy tubes of 25, or monster boxes of 250, along with a single piece if you’re a collector. They should be available to order shortly.