A huge favourite of ours, in the silver bullion coin world, Scottsdale Mints Egyptian Relic series is a refreshing attempt to do something different with legal tender coins. They launched in 2016 with a chuncky five-ounce beast and that was followed up by a two-ounce coin and then a quite beautiful issue in gold. A short while ago we saw a 2017 five-ounce coin and now it’s time to look at the new two ounce issue – in this case, a pair of them.

Decked out with a design based on Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and having what Scottsdale call a ‘chiselled granite edge’, these are unique looking pieces and they’ve chosen the perfect subject this time around. Ramesses II is without question the most impressive and well remembered of all the old Pharoahs. Reigning for even longer than Queen Elizabeth II has been on the British throne, he left behind a body of monuments and architecture that is unprecedented, no doubt linked to an extraordinary talent for self-promotion on a par with the Kardashians…

As we said, two coins this time, although they’re more variants of the same basic design than completely different. A hieroglyph laden background with a face-on Egyptian style portrait of Ramesses sits on one coin. The other changes his face to a skull and ages/distresses the background to look like decayed stonework. The Ramesses coin looks good, but we’re not overly enamoured with the ‘corpse’ version. We’re sure that with the current interest in skull coins, many will disagree.

Issued for the Republic of Chad again and carrying that African states great-looking emblem , the finished article is another cool issue in this very popular series. Priced like a bullion coin, these are also huge value, especially for the coin collector. Mintage this time out is 25,000 per design, so 50,000 total and the coin comes in a small themed box – a nice touch for a bullion coin with a premium this low. Available to order any time now.