With the silver coin series complete, the Royal Australian Mint goes gold for Southern Sky

One of the big hits of the last few years and an early entrant in the domed coin market, the Royal Australian Mints (RAM) Southern Sky and subsequent Northern Sky series wrapped up after six coins late last year. Originally a single coin per year, popularity meant than the second series of three (Northern Sky) was released in a single year. When you have a series this liked, continuing it makes sense, but what do you do when you’ve run out of sky?

For the RAM, the answer has now appeared in the form of a premium gold coin depicting the southern sky in a completely different stylistic way. The artwork is reminiscent of old maps, full of character, and it looks a cool piece. Struck in the same domed format but in an ounce of four-nines gold, there’s no colour on this like that applied to the silver coins and we’d consider that a good thing – we believe colour doesn’t suit gold as well as silver except in rare circumstances.

The packaging looks like a very nice gloss-finish wenge wood box and there’s an enclosed certificate of authenticity which will carry the number of one of the 750 being minted. While this looks like a high quality and unusual numismatic, we feel that a true successor to the hit silver coins is yet to appear. Price alone will limit buyers as the yellow metal has dictated that this cost many times the six silver coins did combined, so here’s hoping that the silver format isn’t in hibernation for long. Available now.