As always with the Perth Mint’s lunar coins, the gold and silver issues feature completely different artwork, although both are the work of veteran mint designer, Ing Ing Jong. There are a couple of common design elements, namely the dragon logo in English and Chinese is the same, and there’s the new P125 privy mark. That celebrates 2024 being the 125th anniversary since the founding of the Perth Mint in 1899. We’d expect this to appear on more issues throughout next year.

The gold variant is the more traditional looking of the pair, with that spindly style of dragon so popular in Chinese mythology. We like the look of it, as it sprints across the coin, with shades of the roadrunner. Despite that, we have a preference for the face-on depiction of the silver issue. It’s a more powerful looking beast, complete with the flaming pearl of lore.

The range is unchanged from previous releases, comprised of seven gold, and five silver at launch, with the humungous 10 kg silver yet to come. As is usual, just the one-ounce silver, and the one-ounce gold, have fixed mintages. Rounding it all out is a solitary platinum version, using the gold coin artwork. As you would expect from the Perth Mint, there’s a wide range of proof variants also released today, and there will be more to come over the next few months.

These are basically coloured silver versions, not just of the one-ounce silver bullion coin, but also one using the gold design. The gold coin reappears in silver with a coat of red paint, and looking pretty good, while the standard silver coin gets a yellow-gold colouring.

Each coin comes mounted to a card, something regular buyers of Perth Mint coins of this type will be well familiar with, and the two variants carry artwork matching their respective coins. There is a proof version of the yellow variant, which comes boxed with a COA.