Street Fighter II is 30 and the increased interest in videogame history means coins are here to celebrate

It seems that videogames are becoming quite the thing in modern numismatics, and so are shaped character coins. Put those two things together and you have a marriage made in coin heaven for the lover of the biggest entertainment history in the world. For make no mistake, the videogame has firmly supplanted movies and music as the behemoth that overshadows all.

Want to know how big? The global box office industry and the global music industry have combined revenue not even close to HALF that of videogames. If you want to understand why videogame coins are here to stay, it’s because the subject is popular, and we’re now getting to that stage when the early history of the industry is getting celebrated by the millions of fans that remember them from their youth.

We’ve already had a wide selection, from the legend that is Space Invaders, through Angry Birds, to Halo and Tetris. The fighting game franchise, Mortal Kombat, has had a release, but the giant of that genre is Street Fighter II, and it’s now 30 years old. Cue the coins….FIGHT!

The shaped character coin, so driven to widespread popularity by the New Zealand Mint’s ‘Chibi’ series, was always going to inspire competition, and while LPM’s new ‘Mini-fighter’ series has a different artistic style, it has similar DNA. Ryu is one of the main protagonists of the Street Fighter franchise and makes a sensible introduction to what looks to be a potentially big series. The Certificate of Authenticity depicts eleven characters on the front, one matching Ryu perfectly, so it would seem we’ll be seeing more of these ultra-popular characters in silver.

Each coin is struck to a proof finish using an ounce of the good stuff (0.999), and extensively coloured on the reverse face. They have that anime style that seems appropriate and there looks to be some brilliant little designs coming up (M.Bison and Chun Li please!). Now we know these aren’t for everyone, but we cover pop-culture coins here extensively because they bring in fresh blood to the hobby and are a valid genre of their own. This is a cool release for those of us that were part of the first generation of videogame players, and we don’t doubt LPM will have little trouble selling the 1,000 mintage. Available to order now, there’s also a coloured bullion range to come, which we’ll cover when we know more.