High Relief Silver - A Popular New Coin Genre To Collect

This is confirmed by the early interest in the first ever Australian Kookaburra 1oz high relief silver proof coin, released at the beginning of May

. Already, very nearly half the total mintage of 10,000 coins has been shipped in response to strong worldwide demand.

High relief silver coins were introduced by The Perth Mint in 2010 with a Tuvalu release commemorating the story of Pheidippidis the ancient Greek who ran 25 miles to Athens with news of his armys historic triumph at the Battle of Marathon.

It was followed by a special Australian commemorative issue portraying Josiah Wedgwoods historic Sydney Cove Medallion, an extremely significant artefact made from clay found near Sydney Cove in 1788.

Subsequently, weve focused on high relief coins from some of our most popular silver series. Not surprisingly, the high relief 1oz silver proof Dragon from this years Australian Lunar series was a major international success with a limited mintage of 7,500 coins, it sold out rapidly!

Later this year in July we will release our third 1oz Australian Kangaroo high relief silver coin. The series got off to an outstandingly successful start in 2010 with a popular release that is no longer available from the Mint. However, anyone thinking about beginning a collection of high relief issues should not overlook the 2011 Kangaroo coin with its superb kangaroo design.

The undoubted interest these coins have already generated have put the high relief concept firmly on our agenda and were working on new projects that will make for some exciting announcements in the future.

Continuing the theme of early coin manufactories in colonial Australia, 1854 saw the opening of a private mint known as the Port Phillip Kangaroo Office. Its issues are exceptionally rare and highly desirable, while its kangaroo obverse anticipated the use of our unique fauna on later Australian coinage.

Established in Melbourne at the height of the Victorian gold rush, the Kangaroo Office was the brainchild of London engraver William Taylor. While gold abounded in the the colony, there was little in the way of hard currency; Taylor hoped to buy gold cheaply and then issue it at full value in the form of 1/4oz, 1/2oz, 1oz and 2oz gold tokens for use in daily business.

Reginald Scaife, the Kangaroo Offices manager arrived in Port Phillip on 26 October 1853 aboard the clipper Kangaroo. Unfortunately, due to the primitive docking facilities, it took months to dismantle and bring ashore the minting press, and then reassemble it at the site eventually secured for the venture in Franklin Street West .

By the time the mint was ready to go into production, gold was significantly more expensive and the project was effectively doomed with the arrival of a large number of official sovereigns. Despite efforts to strike silver and copper tokens, the Kangaroo Office closed in 1857.

The exact output of the Kangaroo Office is impossible to calculate and as Andrew Crellin has written: The total number of tokens of each size remaining could probably be counted on one hand, and even fewer are available for collectors to purchase. One of Australias great rarities, an original Port Phillip gold token could fetch many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

by: Perth Mint

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