Lady Godiva as a Deep Sea Diver and the New Style Royal Mint 5er

 

It is pretty apparent that The Royal Mint LOVE the ‘franchise’ idea.  This started with Potter of course back in 2016.  Since this time they have continued in the same vein with series after series…. yet nothing else has really had quite the same impact.

Something else that is pretty apparent is the sudden shift (it began a couple of years ago) where The Royal Mint appear to be slowly moving away from two pound coins and muscling into the five pound coin category instead.  Here too we see that they are also trying the ‘franchise’ tactic.  Up to now we have had –

 

‘The Queens Beasts’ (fairly standard designs that for some unknown reason have become extremely sought after and which have rocketed in value)

 ‘Music Legends’ (complete with painfully crap artwork and an actual likeness (also a painfully crap one) on only one coin thus far)

‘Beatrix Potter’ (oh how very original and how very convenient – ‘the last ever Peter Rabbit fifty pence’ (but NOT the last ever Peter Rabbit £5 coin lol))

‘Chinese Lunar Year Coins’ (reasonably nice with pretty packaging and which look set to rise to ‘stoopid money’ status on the secondary market)

 ‘The Mr Men’ (a kind of failed franchise that boils pretty much down to RM expecting a massive amount of interest in a retro cartoon (which in all fairness I too would have expected) which never actually came….)  

‘The Tower of London’ (probably the most boring coin collection in Mints new push to sex up five pound coins.  It just doesn’t seem to have a whole lot about it really….. :/  )

‘The Tudor Beasts’ (a not-very-original-in-any-way-shape-or-form series.  This is basically because three quarters of it is a duplication of ‘The Queens Beasts’ – most of the same Royal animals (which apparently guard Queenie or something….) in similar poses to those in the aforementioned series.  Yawn)

‘007 James Bond’ (a super boring set of three coins with really naff and totally disappointing designs by the much revered Matt Dent and some other dude no-one had even heard of before)

‘Alice in Wonderland/Alice Through the Looking Glass’ (a series I fully expected them to release about three or four years ago.  The big boo-boo here is that they did not do these on fifty pences and put them into circulation.  If they had then they may well have had another Potter frenzy on their hands)

 

And I am sure that The Royal Mint have lots of other ‘exciting’ ways of making £5 coins appeal to children and to collectors who had purposefully avoided this denomination altogether in the past.  Exciting, isn’t it?

The truth is that The Royal Mint are trying very hard to totally rebrand a denomination that has (basically since its conception) been reserved for Royal coins and Royal-connection coins (yawn yawn yawn).  Suddenly grabbing hold of something like this by the gonads and demanding that it immediately change and become enormously sexy and appealing to the masses overnight ISNT GOING TO WORK VERY WELL!  That is ONE facet of it all.

 

 ‘The truth is that The Royal Mint are trying very hard to totally rebrand a denomination that has (basically since its conception) been reserved for Royal coins and Royal-connection coins (yawn yawn yawn).’

 

Another part to consider is practicality; fifty pences or two pound coins fit in ones’ hand nicely.  They feel right and are a size that appeals to 99% of collectors (excluding those who were aroused about £5 coins in the first place – urk!).  They are easy to store and are portable.  Five pound coins are heavy, cumbersome, awkward and super-butt-ugly on SO many different levels.  Nothing is ever going to change this, irrespective of design (not that there have been many decent designs in recent years anyhow).

Bottom line?  GO BACK TO £2 COINS DEAR ROYAL MINT!  People happen to like them and they would like them a whole lot more if some were actually put into circulation.

 

 

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