Each year for the last few years the Royal Mint have been quietly producing a series of coins based on the Britannia bullion coin. While they mint up to 1m of the Britannias and they can be a cheap to buy great bullion choice, they also mint a "lunar" version. We have had the snake and horse whcih were on general release from the mint and with large mintages and then the sheep and the monkey which were limited releases sold to USA based IRA pension providers for sale to client accounts. Some 150/175k of each are thought to have been minted and the ones that have so far escaped into the system via eBAY have been limited and expensive. Here is my video for the Monkey release - I bought a couple of them to get graded over ebay at great expense. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoIsoZCvLQE[/youtube]
Interesting, do you think RM is trying to make it a high premium coin or the pension funds? Without thinking too deep into it, these coins could become scarcer than hens teeth.... unlimited than just a going limited into closed for all intent and purposes pension fund seem to be like it contrived to get a numi premium. Not sure of the intricacies of US pension funds, but if it like Australian Pension funds, the privy bullion will go direct into vault.
Problem with these coins is that the privies is on the rim. When you put them in a capsule or grade them, can't really see the privy. End up with just a normal Britannia. But don't be surprised to see their values go up more than the usual Brits, due to their lower mintages.
It seems the buy in order for these is about $15,000 of coins as a pension fund investment or if anyone just wanted to buy the coins. The sponsors seem to be a specialist pension capital hours who doesnt sell to the public in small orders. So it seems most of the coins will stay in pensions but of course at some stage some will hit the market and some already have. The coins have been sold for probably double the spot rate or so into the pension schemes to the few that have emerged have been at double that. I have bought a couple of the monkeys and 6 of the sheep. I graded the sheep and I will grade the monkeys. I think good graded examples will maintain a premium for a while and Britannia collectors (growing) will want all these special editions for a full collection.
Here is a shot or two of the sheep privy. You can see the side in an NGC slab (though its not really in your face).
Yeah, gotta really look hard to see the privy. This is different from those coins that have the privies on the face of the coin itself.
