South Korean producer of innovative stackers, Coins Today, goes prehistoric with a neat two-coin T-Rex fossil pair

Korean producer, Coins Today, have rapidly built themselves a reputation for innovative stackable bullion coins and rounds. A beautiful Doggaebi Shield introduced them to the market, in both 2oz and 1 kg forms, followed up by an intricate Achilles Shield, an Archangel Michael Shield, and a Squid-Game inspired Persona Mask in different finishes. Their latest is of a similar ilk, but different in execution.

Tyrannosaurus Rex, everyone’s favourite bone-crushing beast of slaughter, is the subject, and depicted in fossil form. Like a fossil, not so much a big vertebrate like this, but certainly smaller ones, there are pieces with the fossil itself embedded in it, and the negative impression in the layer above. It’s the perfect natural analogy for stackable bullion coins, and works brilliantly here.

The difference with this issue is that they’re only stackable as sold, in pairs. Each set contains a pair of two-ounce coins, and the T. rex occupies the reverse face of both of them – one a positive, and one a negative. The obverse shows us a clawed foot, and a footprint, and is the same design on both coins in the set. So what we have here is a numismatic set of two coins that stack, not a high-mintage bullion coin.

The mintage is particularly limited, in fact, with just 250 sets on offer. You all know how much we love the prehistoric world here, I’ve already spent days on the guide, and it isn’t half-way complete yet, but even so, this one stands out for its concept and execution. We would love to have this in our coin collection. It comes boxed with a COA (no images yet). It should be available to order now, but we can’t imagine this hanging around too long. Superb!

TYRANT LIZARD

Tyrannosaurus lived throughout what is now western North America, on what was then an island continent known as Laramidia. Fossils are found in a variety of rock formations dating to the Maastrichtian age of the upper Cretaceous Period, 68 to 66 million years ago. It was the last known member of the tyrannosaurids, and among the last non-avian dinosaurs to exist before the Cretaceous–Palaeogene extinction event.

Tyrannosaurus was a bipedal carnivore with a massive skull balanced by a long, heavy tail. Relative to its large and powerful hind limbs, Tyrannosaurus fore limbs were short but unusually powerful for their size and had two clawed digits. The most complete specimen measures up to 12.3 m in length, up to 4 meters tall at the hips, and up to 6.8 metric tons in weight. Although other theropods rivalled or exceeded Tyrannosaurus rex in size, it is still among the largest known land predators and is estimated to have exerted the largest bite force among all terrestrial animals.

By far the largest carnivore in its environment, Tyrannosaurus rex was likely an apex predator, preying upon hadrosaurs, ceratopsians, and possibly sauropods. Some experts, however, have suggested the dinosaur was primarily a scavenger. It is accepted now that Tyrannosaurus rex acted as a predator, and scavenged as modern mammalian and avian predators do. (Source: Wikipedia)