With the Perth Mint powering on through its new Star Trek license, it seemed for a while that nobody would get a bigger one, but the old masters at this typer of coin, the New Zealand Mint, have pulled out all the stops with possibly the biggest license of them all, Star Wars. The NZ Mint have been doing movie/television tie-ins for years with some pretty good results. Doctor Who, Disney and Thunderbirds have been the latest to come, and while not every coin has been a huge success, they’ve done a super job overall and this bodes well for their latest acquisition.

Star Wars debuted in cinemas back in 1977 and has become a huge cultural and commercial juggernaut ever since. While much of its reputation rests on the first movie trilogy, the second not garnering much in the way of fan or critical acclaim in comparison, news that the series creator George Lucas had sold the rights to the Star Wars Universe to media juggernaut Disney has excited fans around the world anticipating the movies continuing. That anticipation was not misplaced, and Disney have detailed a hugely ambitious schedule of new movies over the next few years that has reinvigorated interest in Star Wars.

The news that a new movie is to be released for Christmas 2015 was obviously of staggering interest, with pundits already predicting a world-record $2.5b gross. The announcement that fan favourite director J.J. Abrams was to helm the movie has sent the initial excitement into the stratosphere. An early trailer has also further stoked interest.

It’s against this backdrop that the NZ Mint have released their first Star Wars coin and like Disney, it’s to the origins that they’ve gone for inspiration. Depicting the first appearance of uber-villain Darth Vader, the clean struck coin can’t help but be a success, much like the debut Disney coin, Steamboat Willie. Available in the usual 1 oz silver and ¼ oz gold, the mint is also making available direct from them a 1 oz gold. It’s specualation at present if the coin will follow the aforementioned Steamboat Willie into the realms of the kilo coin. With mintages set at 10,000 for the silver and the gold at 1,000 and 500 respectively, we’d imagine a sell-out happening quite quickly given many of these will end up far from the field of numismatics and well into the world of Star Wars merchandising stores.

Packaging is nice enough, in line with others in the mints range and prices are, all in US$, $85.00, $620.00, and $2,500 respectively. Available to order later today, you should see these for sale in quite a few places (there’s an advertiser deal on our homepage). Coming soon will be an announcement detailing new coins being launched in the programme to commemorate the launch of the new movie and we’ll detail that out when we have further information.