In our view, one of the best of last years meteorite coins was the excellent Solar System:Moon coin from the Mint of Poland and they made no secret of the fact it was to be the first coin in a new series. This year sees the second in the series to be launched and it’s heading sunwards to one of the most enigmatic bodies in our solar system, Mercury. Like the Moon coin, this one is a truly domed strike, still a relatively uncommon strike in the numismatic world because of the difficulty of maintaining the integrity of todays complex and detailed designs while bending a coin to this shape.

Apart from the impact crater on the reverse side, in which sits an actual piece of the meteorite NWA8409, the coin isn’t a high-relief design, going instead for some fine detailing of the Mercury planet surface instead. While last years coin was antique-finished, this years is coloured or gilded, we’re not sure yet, and then antiqued. The end result looks great with minimal and unobtrusive inscriptions on the reverse face in particular. The reverse face is the convex one, meant to represent the planetary surface – on many of this genre of coins the reverse face is convex to suggest the impact crater of the meteorite fragment that almost invariably sits there.

The obverse face carries on the theme with surface detailing and the obligatory effigy of Queen Elizabeth II, a requirement of Niue-issued numismatics. Presented in a good quality wooden box, inside which is a Certificate of Authenticity, the whole makes a nice package. The next coins due are one for Mars next year, followed by one for Earth in 2018 so it does look like this is shaping up to be a fine, coherent set of very high quality coins. Priced around the €150 mark, they’re not as expensive as many of the new breed either, as we have noticed a trend towards more weight and less mintage with this type of coin, the mintage in this case remaining at an odd 686 pieces.

Other coins from the Mint of Poland in a similar vein are the Canyon Diablo/Wolfe Creek range and the superb Erte Ale volcano coin. MCI-Mint in Germany have released very similar Moon and Mercury coins to this Mint of Poland pair, but those are five ounces in weight and considerably more expensive. Others also have entrants in the genre, so choice is plentiful, even if getting them all would lighten the bank balance considerably. Many of these do appreciate however, some early Cook Islands coins from 2009 approaching 8-10 times the issue price for example. Available to pre-order now, the coin will ship in mid-May