Silver Ounce 2021 Mythical Creatures - Unicorn, 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 commemorative, bullion and collector coins under the authority of Niue. These coins are 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). Many of these feature popular characters from myths, legends and tales.

This coin is part of the Mythical Creatures series of premium bullion coins by the Czech Mint and features the legendary Unicorn.

The Mint says about it:
The Czech Mint presents a unicorn on the sixth silver coin from the collector's cycle Mythical Creatures. Human imagination has no limits. When our ancient ancestors heard rumours of exotic creatures with one horn, a number of legends suddenly arose that attributed magical properties to them, and Indian rhinos or Arctic narwhals became unicorns.

These noble stallions have been perceived for centuries as a symbol of beauty, purity, innocence and virginity or Christian love and resilience. The spiral horn that grew out of these whites' foreheads did not serve to fight - on the contrary, it was endowed with magical healing power. According to legend, it aroused a love desire, but above all it purified water and neutralised poisons. Therefore, it seemed to be an ideal material for making cups. The poisoned drink in such a glass began to rustle until the container ruptured.

This idea may have a real basis. If it was a cup made of rhino horn, which is made of keratin, then, for example, arsenic could react in this way in contact with the horn.

The reverse design is by Mária Filová; the obverse is by Asamat Baltaev - who also designed the reverses of some coins in the series.