The Royal Mint’s James Bond retrospective continues into the Brosnan-era with the launch of the 90s range

Continuing their seven issue romp through the filmography of super-spy, James Bond 007, the Royal Mint has released the fourth coin in the range – the 90s. Each of the seven issues showcases an iconic vehicle from a particular decade, starting in the 1960s, and running up to the 2020s. We covered the 60s and Lotus Esprit 70s issues earlier, and you can see the 80s further down in this article.

We’re not going to rehash the history of 007, you can read a bit more about that in our 60s coverage, but unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know about the various iconic gadgets and vehicles that have littered the 25 official films since 1962. It’s quite a neat idea to pick one from each decade for the coins, and there’s a common style to the whole series. The range consists of three gold proof variants, and three silver, as well as a pair of one-ounce bullion coins, one in each metal, although the latter seems to have stalled at the first issue.

Today’s new coin features the 1990s, in which there were three films, all starring Pierce Brosnan, the fifth actor to play the role officially. The vehicle chosen to represent the decade hails from the last of the three films, the utterly forgettable 1999 entrant, ‘The World Is Not Enough’. There was a very iconic scene in that film, however, involving a high-tech speedboat driven at speed along the River Thames by what was then the Millennium Dome.

In the typical series style, there’s no background scene, so the boat, with Bond at the helm, is depicted in isolation, inside the famous gun barrel (which we always thought looked more like a lens aperture) border. The background field has a repeating pattern of the three film titles from that decade. The obverse, in typical Royal Mint style, is just the effigy of King Charles III, surrounded by the issue inscriptions. The range should be available to order today.

As we didn’t cover the release of the 007 80s design, we’ve added images of the gold and silver coins below. As you’ve probably guessed by now, the style is exactly the same as the other three, but here we have little Acrostar ‘Bede’ Jet from the opening sequence of Octopussy. I’d so love to have a go in one of those, they look an amazing amount of fun.

There are still around 25 of theBede BD-5 still flying today. They were a kit plane, developed in the USA in the 70s, and despite selling over 5,000 sets of plans, only a few hundred were built. One of the last versions constructed, the BD-5J had a jet engine, and that’s the one seen in Octopussy. It retains the world record for the world’s lightest jet to this day at just 162.7 kg – just staggering.