The Red Horse is the Second Seal of the Apocalypse, in Carpathian Mint’s high-relief silver coin series

Not one of the cheeriest stories in the Bible, the Book of Revelation, also called the Book of the Apocalypse (spoiler alert!), is the final book in the New Testament, and dated to around 95 CE. In Revelation chapters 5, 6 and 8 can be found the seven symbolic seals, each said to represent judgments and apocalyptic events to take place, as each of them is broken.

Carpathian Mint have a three-ounce silver coin series, with each seal having its own release. The first of them, the White Horse, was issued in late 2023, and now they’ve issued the second, the Red Horse. This is religious symbolism, so interpretations vary, but the common historicist view is that it was associated with a particularly tumultuous period in the Roman Empire, when it was wracked by civil wars, and emperors changed often. Different people will have different views, of course, but for the coin it’s the Red Horse of Peace.

Despite the peaceful overtones, our rider is wielding a very large gilded sword, his horse trampling skulls underfoot, and rampaging through a crowd, so all very ‘Old Testament’. Lots of layered high-relief, with fine detail packed in everywhere, it’s a dynamic design. Embedded to one side is the second seal, looking just as if it were pressed into wax. The common series obverse carries all seven seals, and the Second Seal is coloured, just as the First Seal was on the previous issue.

We like this series. It’s three-ounces, so a bit pricier than the usual release in this genre, but it does have the advantage of a healthy 60 mm diameter, which is close to double the surface area of a 45 mm coin. It comes boxed with a COA, and has a mintage of 500 pieces. Available to pre-order now.