As we reported just yesterday, the New Zealand Mint has rebranded their collectible coin division as Agoro, and the first new issue to take advantage of that is in what we’d argue has been their flagship series for a decade – Star Wars. We’ve often been a little critical of the mint’s poster/comic cover ranges for their repetition, releasing the same design in multiple formats, but we’re extremely pleased to see Agoro kick off with a new, and very well done take on a genre we thought done to death.

Instead of yet another reproduction of one of the many original posters, we get one of Disney artist, Erik Tan’s, brilliant extended portrait format designs. We’re kicking it all off with Episode IV, which confusingly was the first film released back in 1977, and the stylised artwork is quite sublime. Fortunately, Tan did similar artwork for the others in the nine-film sequence, so here’s hoping we get to see the others in the coming years.

The obverse carries a particularly neat reproduction of the opening text from the film, that iconic mini-backstory that appears to be rolling into the background. All told, a surprisingly fine addition to the Star Wars movie poster coin selection. It has a mintage of 800 pieces, which Agoro classify as ‘Legendary’. We won’t be using these classifications in our future coverage, as they make no sense, given absolute numbers have little meaning on differing formats. Available to order now.