Star Wars The Force Awakens appears on silver foils for the first time with a new series from Niue

Unless you’ve been living under a numismatic-free rock for the last few years, you’ll no doubt be aware of the New Zealand Mint’s expansive Star Wars range. From the superb Classic Star Wars character series – now 14 coins old – to colour coins for the new movies, no sci-fi stone has been left unturned. The franchise has even seen an impressive selection of silver foils ranging from the banknote-sized coin notes, through to the almost comic-book sized premium foils.

Apart from a few coloured silver coins, in our view the weakest Star Wars issues from the NZ Mint, the new trilogy comprising The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and Spaceballs 2 (or whatever Episode IX is called when it premieres in December 2019), have not had a lot of representation. We’re hoping that the new movie characters eventually get a release in the Classic Star Wars style format, but in the meantime, it’s the coin note format that is starting the inevitable push, perhaps as a way of testing just how popular the new pantheon of characters truly is.

At 150.0 x 70.0 mm in size and a tiny fraction of a mm in thickness,  silver coin notes can be formed in only five-grams of fine silver and so remain relatively inexpensive. The large surface area does allow for more adventurous artwork and this new series is the perfect example. Seven notes will make up the set and each will feature a major character in the 2015 movie. First to debut is Rey, played by Daisy Ridley. Depicting a close up of Rey to the left that’s fully coloured, it sits alongside a larger engraved image of her on a speeder. We’ve seen images of the second foil and the style remains very similar. Buyers of the ‘A New hope’ set will know what to expect.

The obverse is a banknote-style series of patterns with the effigy of Queen Elizabeth II in the centre. Each coin is sealed to prevent handling damage and comes in a sleeve from which it can be removed to be placed in the very neat album that will hold all seven foils. Be warned, however – the album is only available with this first Rey foil. All subsequent releases will include only the foil itself, so make sure you pick this one up. Fortunately, the mintage of 50,000 means these will be relatively easy to pick up.

A decent looking issue, with a cool album and part of a series of defined size, we think foils like this have a future, perhaps introducing new collectors to the wider numismatic world. Available to pre-order now with shipping starting in a couple of days, it will sell for $39.00 USD. Available from several of our sponsors, so feel free to give them a try first. The second foil – Finn – will be released in a couple of weeks time.