Silver Ounce 2021 Galaga, Coin from Niue - detailed information

Niue, a sovereign state in free association with New Zealand, uses two official legal tender currencies. The New Zealand Dollar is the circulation currency for daily transactions, while the government also authorises legal tender coins in the Niue Dollar currency for collector's purposes.

A number of mints issue a large variety of coins under the authority of Niue. Most of these are commemorative and collector issues dedicated to historical or general popular culture themes not related to Niue itself. Many of them are in standard bullion sizes - typically, one ounce of silver (abbreviated as 1 oz Ag, where "Ag" comes from the Latin word for silver, Argentum). Those issued at prices much higher than their bullion value are separately listed in the Non-Circulating Legal Tender (NCLT) silver ounce section of the site.

Unlike them, this coin is targeted at bullion investors and was initially released at a price close to the value of its precious metal content.

This coin produced by APMEX marks 40 years of the classic arcade game Galaga.

Galaga is a space shooter and sequel to Galaxian, upon which many genre-defining enhancements were made. Players took control of Fighter, the special fighter spaceship at the bottom of the screen to face off against alien spaceships that appeared as a variety of sprites at the top of the screen and attacking down. Special boss units called Boss Galaga at the top of the enemy formation required two hits to destroy and could capture the player's fighter using a tractor beam. If the player then destroyed this boss unit the captured fighter would be released and the player would control two fighters on screen simultaneously!

With every new stage the enemy spaceships became faster and more aggressive leading to challenging game play. Galaga was released in 1981 to critical acclaim and is widely regarded as one of the classics of the arcade video game era.