Not a name you would traditionally expect in the bullion coin market, AllCollect is a European producer known for its more exotic style, employing unusual techniques for its issues. They’re particularly known for their minigold, huge art issues, and as one of the first to enter the now burgeoning modified bullion coin market, with their pretty ‘Golden Enigma’ series. Obviously, their foray into bullion was going to be a bit different.

At it’s core, ‘Predators’ doesn’t stray far from the formula used by others in recent years. One ounce of fine silver in weight, round, and with a 15,000 mintage, is standard stuff, and most stackers seem to prefer it that way. What AllCollect have chosen to do to differentiate themselves is to employ multiple finishes and give the finished article a unique look. As you can tell from the series title, the subjects here are the great predatory animals from all classes of wildlife, but the coin layout remains consistent.

The background field of each issue has a prooflike (mirror) finish, and the animal and the ground itself is done in a matt finish. The imprint (paw, stinger etc.) is partly incused and part-finished in reverse-proof. The rest of the coin, including the obverse, is struck to a brilliant uncirculated standard. The obverse has the attractive emblem of the issuing nation, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Formerly known as Zaire, the DRC is actually the eleventh largest country in the world by surface area.

At the time of starting this bullion coin profile, there are only a few designs unrevealed in silver, each with a mintage capped at 15,000 pieces. Fortunately, we have images of all sixteen coins from the companion minigold variants. These are only sold as a subscription set through German television shopping channel HSE24, and carry the same artwork over into the 11 mm, 0.5 gram gold format that is extremely popular in Europe. In an odd twist, these are issued by Senegal aand there is a decent looking colelction folder to hold the whole set aas it is released over the next year or two (some coins are dated 2022).

A good set of coins with a neat selection of subjects and a coherent visual style. If you can track them down, there are also Golden Enigma veariants available (with chromomite colour and gilding), but these are considerably more expensive. In a recent twist, we’ve also seen the first in a ‘Predators: Extinct’ series make its debut, this one depicting a Smilodon (sabre-toothed cat).