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 is part of the Czech Lion range of bullion coins issued with a new design every year by the Czech Mint. This is the second design for 2023, which is in proof grade and features a hologram.
The mint says about it: In 1999, the Czech Republic produced a unique coin - the world's first coin with holographic embossing in pure gold. It was a bi-metallic commemorative coin produced by the Czech Mint for the Czech National Bank on the occasion of the end of the second millennium. At that time, it was the minting of simple binary microstructures, however, today's technology is at an incomparably higher level. There are currently only a few workplaces in the world that can design and produce non-binary holographic structures, and the Czech company IQ Structures is at the very technological cutting edge. In 2020, in cooperation with the Czech Mint, it created the Czech Security Check security hologram, which protects selected high-mass “Czech Lion“ coins from counterfeiting.
Since holograms are not only a protective element, but also an ornamental one, both companies decided to go even further in 2023. Instead of a small part of the coin, they devoted the entire surface of the reverse side to the embossed hologram. |