Tom & Jerry, the masters of mayhem, are brought to life for their 80th anniversary by the Royal Dutch Mint

Never mind Disney. If you want top quality cartoon shorts, there are plenty of better ones out there from studios like Hanna Barbera, and Warner Bros. One of the first and the most loved is centred around the never-ending battle for supremacy between a tomcat and a mouse. Tom & Jerry debuted way back in 1940 and quickly picked up a devoted following.

Between 1940 and 1958, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera produced 114 shorts for MGM, winning seven Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film. In the decade that followed, a further 47 shorts were produced and it wasn’t until 2001that the first of the last three to be made, appeared. After eighty years, they seem to be as popular as ever, the sign of an exceptional creation.

The Royal Dutch Mint has snagged the licence to produce a medallion to mark the 80th anniversary of the legendary duo, and they’ve decided to use a novel technique to do so. The lenticular style of metal striking has been used on several coins before, mostly as a privy mark to enhance bullion security, but its use as the primary feature on a coin is quite rare.For those unaware, lenticular style involvesstriking the metal in such a way as to create two visually orientated surfaces which can reveal a different image depending on how the coin is viewed.

This one has Tom on one orientation, and Jerry on the other. It’s clean, simple, and quite effective looking, aided by the lack of need to display issue details. The obverse is terrific. The 80th anniversary logo is brilliant – one of the best of its type we’ve seen – perfectly encapsulating the soul of the show.

A strange pair of formats on offer here. A base-metal variant on a card sells for just €12.50 and has a mintage of 3,000 units. The gold version has a mintage of just 80 pieces, and sells for €2699.00. Unless we’re missing something, that’s a huge price gap. Where is the silver version guys? Other than that, a very cool release. Available to order now, but not shipping until next March.