Drumroll please.
It is the last coin (or at least for now….) in the ‘Winnie the Pooh’ series of fifty pences. And the final addition is….. er…. ‘Pooh and Friends’. Which is actually the same title as the coin that came out last year :/
So, not exactly original as such. And what the hell happened with the Rabbit??? Would it not have made more sense to have had this character on the final coin rather than another get together of characters so small you can barely tell them apart?
I could not tell you where I read it but I am bloody sure I did read it…. that the final coin would be the Rabbit. Perhaps someone else will remember seeing this. Perhaps they will even still have a link to that elusive page.
Anyhow, as far as designs go it is nice. Nicer in fact than ‘Pooh and Friends’ MK I. And in colour it is even nicer (no surprise as these are all so obviously designed to look good in colour and I would imagine very little consideration goes into how good they will look in standard cupro-nickel).
It has been a long old slog and personally I am glad it is all over. I do like the ‘Pooh’ coins very much but it has dragged on a bit. It dragged on even longer when the bloody ‘Kanga’ release was held up due to ‘a shortage of materials’. A shortage which did not seem to affect the far more sought-after ‘Pride’ coin. It’s a funny old thing the way an obvious ‘big seller’ can conjure up the necessary alloys – even when there is a huge shortage of ‘coin meat’.
And if I were to offer up any kind of prayer it would be that Mint now leave it all at that and don’t go down the same ‘Do It To Death’ road as they did with ‘Potter’. I personally think that nine is enough. It is a lot to have based around one bear and his crew. Going on to make a load of others would introduce boredom into the series and just make it feel cheap and superficial.
Just my opinion of course….. Some people might be quite happy if they go on to mint another twenty :/
© Article and image copyright Mik Smith 2022
