The Mint of Gdańsk has been busy. Here’s a round-up of their latest coin issues, from witch trials, to nuclear war.

In our continuing press to get on top of a mighty backlog of new issues, here’s our latest round-up. This time around, we’re looking at the recent output of the increasingly prolific Mint of Gdańsk, who have quickly carved out a good reputation for inventive subject choice, and quality design. They do have a favourite format, with all six of these new coins weighing in at two-ounces of silver, with an antique finish.

Two of the six are new series debuts, while others continue existing, though still relatively new series. The Hiroshima coin is a particular highlight, offering a poignant and on-point look at the bombing of this ancient Japanese city, and its aftermath. Joan of Arc is our favourite of the four historically themed coins, although Witch Trial has the most inventive subject in numismatic terms. All coins come boxed with a Certificate of Authenticity, and all are available to order now, either directly from the mint, or from their stockists worldwide.

2022 MANKIND’S MISTAKES 01: WITCH TRIAL

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If you want a coin series to go on forever, just call it ‘Mankind’s Mistakes’, because that’s a list growing faster than any coin schedule could possibly keep up with. Picking subjects from that list that will make interesting coins is something else. Fortunately, the mints first effort is a fascinating one – the witch-hunting craze that spread through Europe on the back of yet another outburst of religious fervour.

The first coin depicts the aftermath of the almost inevitable guilty verdict, with the poor convicted women bound to a pole, which is erected in the middle of a bonfire. The whole scene is shown, including those that tried them, and those that lit the flames. It’s actually a perfect encapsulation of an event like that, managing to pack it all into a small coin face. There’s some light colouring on the flames, but in general, all the heavy lifting is done by the high-relief and the antique-finish. The obverse is a highlight for me. The woodcut-like, medieval religious imagery in the border is a super touch, reminding us that these events were real, and not depicting mythology, like so many coins in this style.

MINTS DESCRIPTION: A witch trial is a search for people who have been labelled witches, or a search for evidence of witchcraft. The classical period of witch-hunts in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America took place in the Early Modern period or about 1450 to 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War, resulting in an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 executions. The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. In other regions, like Africa and Asia, contemporary witch-hunts have been reported from sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea, and official legislation against witchcraft is still found in Saudi Arabia and Cameroon today.

In current language, “witch-hunt” metaphorically means an investigation that is usually conducted with much publicity, supposedly to uncover subversive activity, disloyalty, and so on, but with the real purpose of intimidating political opponents. It can also involve elements of moral panic or mass hysteria.

DENOMINATION COMPOSITION WEIGHT DIAMETER FINISH MINTAGE BOX / COA
$5 NZD (Niue) 0.999 silver 62.2 g 45.0 mm Antique 500 YES / YES

2022 UNIVERSE 03: THE MILKY WAY

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The third in the mints ‘Universe’ series, this follows previous issues in sporting a domed strike, with colour, and a piece of meteorite in the centre of the concave reverse face. Astronomy seems to be a great fit for domed coins, something the Royal Australian Mint learned a few years ago. That’s no different to this coin, with the swirling spiral galaxy of ours fitting the physical coin really well. The piece of meteorite is a little incongruous, and we don’t know from which meteorite it came, but the feature is quite de rigueur in this genre.

The obverse is, again, custom for this release, rather than common to the series. There’s a set of constellations over a struck image of the Milky Way. A good addition to the series. Previous issues are ‘Black Hole’, and the first coin ‘Universe’.

MINTS DESCRIPTION: The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy’s appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. The term Milky Way is a translation of the Latin via lactea, from the Greek γαλακτικός κύκλος (galaktikos kýklos), meaning “milky circle”. From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610. Until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies.

DENOMINATION COMPOSITION WEIGHT DIAMETER FINISH MINTAGE BOX / COA
$5 NZD (Niue) 0.999 silver 62.2 g 50.0 mm Antique 500 YES / YES

2022 HEROINES 02: JEANNE D’ARC

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It seems that the mint has a thing for burning women this month! Joan of Arc is feted as a heroine of France, attributed with giving the English a run for their money, with battlefield prowess, and religious fervour. In reality, a troubled and driven girl, used by those around here for political gain, and to rouse the peasant population to war. As you’d expect, it all ended badly with an open-air barbecue, but by then, she’d already entered history.

Again, the Mint of Gdańsk has done a fine job encapsulating the story on a single coin, something we have to say they do really well. There’s Joan in her armour, a cross, mounted soldiers, a castle, and French iconography in the form of a rose window outline. The flames are coloured, but as with the Witch Trial coin, it’s the high-relief and antique-finish that work the best. The custom obverse pulls lots of elements from the popular tale, and is a very attractive face in its own right. The first coin, Hua Mulan, was another terrific issue.

MINTS DESCRIPTION: Joan of Arc (French: Jeanne d’Arc) is a patron saint of France, honoured as a defender of the French nation for her role in the siege of Orléans and her insistence on the coronation of Charles VII of France during the Hundred Years’ War. Stating that she was acting under divine guidance, she became a military leader who transcended gender roles and gained recognition as a saviour of France.

Joan was born to a propertied peasant family at Domrémy in northeast France. In 1428, she requested to be taken to Charles, later testifying that she was guided by visions from the archangel Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine to help him save France from English domination.

DENOMINATION COMPOSITION WEIGHT DIAMETER FINISH MINTAGE BOX / COA
$5 NZD (Niue) 0.999 silver 62.2 g 45.0 mm Antique 500 YES / YES

2022 HUMAN TRAGEDIES 02: HIROSHIMA

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The second coin in the ‘Human Tragedies’ series, it follows a very striking release in January that took the disaster at Chernobyl as its theme. This one sticks with nuclear power, but instead of power generation, its destructive power on show. While we were initially a little disappointed that the realisation here is very similar to the first issue, it didn’t last long. We think this is a fantastic design, that simply reinforces the ideas behind the first one even more.

The mask is present again, but it’s a flight mask, as worn by the crew of the B-29 Enola Gay, in 1945. The sight of the uranium bomb, Little Boy, falling towards Hiroshima, is a poignant one, and very powerful visually. It’s aided by the depth imparted through the high-relief strike, and the glow-in-the-dark UV colour. The obverse carries an image of the devastated cityscape. A superb design, and our favourite of this round-up. I’d like to see a design for the First World War Battle of Ypres, where poison gas was used on the battlefield in high quantities. It would fit the series style well, and was certainly an epic tragedy.

MINTS DESCRIPTION: 6 August 1945. The Americans launched an atomic attack on Hiroshima and three days later on Nagasaki. The aim of the raid was to force the Japanese to sign a deed of unconditional surrender. As a result of the attack, both cities were almost completely destroyed and at least 140,000 people were killed. However, the number of casualties is far higher due to the radiation sickness that affected the survivors. The dropping of the atomic bombs by the Americans led to Japanese Emperor Hirohito’s decision to surrender unconditionally and thus end World War II.

DENOMINATION COMPOSITION WEIGHT DIAMETER FINISH MINTAGE BOX / COA
$5 NZD (Niue) 0.999 silver 62.2 g 45.0 mm Antique 500 YES / YES

2022 FAMOUS EXPLORERS 02: MARCO POLO

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Another second in the series, Marco Polo follows Zheng He as the latest famous explorer. Pretty much everyone knows who Marco Polo was, and the coin reverse will be recognisable to those that do. There are Chinese buildings in the background,,, said to be the Winter Palace of the Bogd Khan located in Ulaanbaatar, and the foreground is filled with a merchant caravan, made up of laden camels, and a diplomatic meeting between the Khan, and Marco Polo’s father, or uncle.

Zheng He had an unusual porcelain insert embedded in it, and this time it’s a 3d-printed book, likewise hand painted with plenty of detail. The obverse is another custom job, featuring an impressive four-elephant mobile pub, and lots of pretty circular patterns in the Mongol style. Lots of great little touches on this one, with the expression on the camels face a particular favourite.

MINTS DESCRIPTION: Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant, explorer and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. His travels are recorded in The Travels of Marco Polo (also known as Book of the Marvels of the World and Il Milione, c. 1300), a book that described to Europeans the then mysterious culture and inner workings of the Eastern world, including the wealth and great size of the Mongol Empire and China in the Yuan Dynasty, giving their first comprehensive look into China, Persia, India, Japan and other Asian cities and countries.

DENOMINATION COMPOSITION WEIGHT DIAMETER FINISH MINTAGE BOX / COA
$5 NZD (Niue) 0.999 silver 62.2 g 45.0 mm Antique 500 YES / YES

2022 FAMOUS ASSASSINATIONS 01: JING KE

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The first in an all-new series called ‘Famous Assassinations’, ironically starts with a little known event, and a failed one at that. Jing Ke tried to assassinate the future first emperor of China, and had he succeeded, we might live in a different world today. You all know the drill by now. This is antique-finished, rimless, and struck with high-relief.

We’re torn on this one. The relief on the two central characters is top-notch, and the gilding is well placed, but the composition doesn’t quite work for me. This has been an excellent collection of new releases, so it may just be me looking for something to moan about… We do love the less obvious choice of subject, and the head in the 3d box is a quirky touch. An intriguing idea for a series, we look forward to seeing where they go with it.

MINTS DESCRIPTION: Jing Ke (died 227 BC) was a youxia during the late Warring States period of Ancient China. As a retainer of Crown Prince Dan of the Yan state, he was infamous for his failed assassination attempt on King Zheng of the Qin state, who later became the Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor (reign from 221 BC to 210 BC). His story is told in the chapter titled Biographies of Assassins (刺客列傳) in Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian.

DENOMINATION COMPOSITION WEIGHT DIAMETER FINISH MINTAGE BOX / COA
$5 NZD (Niue) 0.999 silver 62.2 g 45.0 mm Antique 500 YES / YES