The Royal Canadian Mint debuts its first ‘Ice Age’ two-ounce silver bullion coin – the fearsome Smilodon

The Royal Canadian Mint has debuted its latest silver bullion series, and they’ve headed back to the Ice Age for inspiration. This is one of their regular 0.9999 two-ounce silver series the mint produces, usually nature based, although they’ve dabbled in the supernatural as well. The style is typical RCM, with a wide, starburst-filled border carrying the inscriptions, and a similarly starburst obverse with the Susanna Blunt effigy of Queen Elizabeth II, enhanced with a nice tribute inscription for her.

The coin design is pretty good, in our view. The Smilodon, known by most as the Sabre-toothed Cat, is generally thought to be a large, solidly built animal, with a big, stout neck, and powerful legs. You certainly get that impression here – whatever this thing punches into is definitely going down!! It isn’t perfect, but decent, especially for a bullion coin. We’d have liked a narrower border, but we complain about that with loads of mint’s, so not specifically an RCM issue.

We’re going to predict this will be a great quality strike, and the old bugbear of milk spots seems to have banished with the RCM’s new processes in place. Kudos to them for that. Regular readers will know this release gets an automatic bump for having prehistoric life on it, but we still feel it’s an appealing release for a wider audience. An open mintage means it should be easy to pick up. The coin is exclusively distributed by Manfra, Tordella and Brookes, a part of the Swiss PAMP group. Available now.