The second of the Royal Mints £100 for £100 silver coins has launched and like the first coin depicts a major London landmark, this time the building most associated with the British royal family, Buckingham Palace. It isn’t just the subject matter that follows on from what’s gone before, the design taking that same publics-eye view of the monument, a very refreshing change. It’s also struck in what we can only describe as a kind of semi-liquid style, with details flowing from one to the other instead of being hard-edged and micro managed as is often the case with architecturally themed coins.

At two-ounces of fine silver in weight, it’s quite a bit larger than the regular £20 coin as you’d expect, but sadly that hasn’t manifested itself as a greatly increased diameter, the extra weight, as before, going to thickness. We’d still like to see the diameter increase from 40mm to 50mm to better show off the design, especially after so much effort has been made keeping the reverse-side artwork so free of superfluous inscriptions, all of which have been put on the obverse where they belong. We guess the fact the coin is technically much closer to be being practical legal tender than most commemorative coins is probably behind the decision to keep the size limited.

Packaging is informative and well done, although not up to regular commemorative coin releases from the Royal Mint, again, only to be expected, and overall we like this one almost as much as the first coin. Available to order from the Royal Mint website for, you guessed it, £100.