I have purchased the 5 medal Garden Panda Series set earlier this week. I look forward to receiving it. I agree with Numistacker in that it appears (from the pics) to be an innovative design and a well executed sculpt and finish. For me with medals, that's the only thing that I can say will consistently have me interested in a medal....excellent deign and execution of the sculpt and finish. I don't care if it's a "popular" theme or series. I don't care if it's not .999 silver or if it simply copper, bi-metallic, bronze, or brass. I will only reward (with my money in the form of purchases) a mint or sponsor of a medal when they take great effort to hire the appropriately skilled artists and employ the best techniques of production....otherwise I won't be interested in supporting the release at all regardless of whether or not anyone else does and regardless of the hype.
They've landed. If you ordered from Lucky, he should be shipping in the next day or two. You'll start to see them on the secondary market soon enough. 99 sets, and 59 of the 99 will have the antique silver. Ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/222581119824
I gather that these are now going to find the way from Lucky to me. I have ordered either 2 or 3 sets of 6 medals from Lucky if he can find the 3rd set that I originally wanted then great. They seem to be pretty much sold out for the sets of 6. I am wondering if it was a tiny bit lazy marketing as a set of 6 or maybe that was just good marketing. From the first pics they look good and I am probably going to get them all graded as usual. Not everyone wants 5 or 6 medals so I am going to monitor things and might make a few singles available on ebay at some stage.
Good news on the horizon. A big U.S., dealer just bought 10 sets of the Garden Pandas (set of 6). You should see it on their website soon enough - or maybe after they get them graded. All things going well, this should set in motion for them to pick up other series. Hopefully this will attract new collectors to this space.
I think it is important to highlight that the Garden Pandas began as an oil clay mold, then converted to plaster mold, then steel mold. They are not computer generated like the temple of heaven pandas. I believe the temple of heaven panda went from a computer generated image straight to mold. There is a lot hands on work done when they created the Garden Pandas. Both types are very nice, but I think it is important to note the reason why one doesn't look so 'perfect'. Pictures attached are molds for the Garden Panda
We've seen some preliminary sketches of the Garden #2, and they look nice. It's of the Yuyuan garden. If the picture translates well onto the metal, it will be a stunning piece. And apparently artists are now coming out of the wood work wanting a piece of the action of this series, which has proven to be quite popular. Time will tell if 'Van Gogh' will have his hand on the 2nd one. Regardless, I'm stoked to see what the finished product will look like. Oh, and they're thinking of increasing the mintage of the silver antique to 99, making #1 silver antique ultra rare. Anyway, just a brief update on #2.
