The Royal Canadian Mint expands its nature-themed bullion range with four new coins

Famed for their various bullion series themed around the extensive fauna of this huge country, the Royal Canadian Mint has spent the last decade or so issuing small series of coins, like their 2011 Canadian Wildlife, and 2014 Birds of Prey series. Despite the occasional detour, the subject still remains the primary focus of the mints bullion wing.

The latest issues include a couple of straight-up bullion coins, sold encapsulated, and featuring the Lynx, a feline predator. The other pair, featuring a polar bear and its cub, are sold as part of the mints Premium Bullion programme.

The Lynx is relatively small at around 10 kilograms, but remains a potent predator in its cold environment. Its distinctive ears have been captured perfectly by the mints artists, who have done sterling work on this ‘Animal Portraits’ bullion series, of which this Lynx design is the seventh. It’s an attractive, natural-looking portrait. The border is overly wide for us, but that’s quite normal for the RCM.

The silver coin is an unusual 3/4 oz in weight, the RCM often dabbling in atypical sizes, and the gold coin is a 1/4 oz in weight. Both are of 0.9999 fineness, as you’d expect from here. They have a reverse proof finish, with the background field matte frosted. The silver coin sports the maple-leaf privy on its left side. A nice coin, one collectors of this series will not be disappointed by

The second release is called ‘Polar Bear and Cubs’ and depicts one of these awe-inspiring animals with a pair of youngsters. Again, we have that wide border, but the central artwork by Pierre Leduc is good, and while we’re not usually huge fans of the starburst rays that have become more popular of late, they work well here, as well as on the obverse, behind the Susanna Blunt effigy of Queen Elizabeth II. There’s a paw-print privy mark over on the left side.

As this coin is what the mint is pushing as ‘giftable’, and part of the RCM’s Premium Bullion range, both the one-ounce silver, and tenth-ounce gold variants come mounted to a card, which is attractive and compact, making the act of gifting one easier than just handing over an encapsulated coin. They do seem to charge a premium for it, however, with the silver coming in at $69.95 CAD.