Silver Two Ounces 2023 Pac-Man, 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 - including two ounces of silver (abbreviated as 2 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 two ounces 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 premium bullion coin depicts the famous maze of the Pac-Man game.

Pac-Man is an arcade video game originally released in 1980 by Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc. (previously Namco). Once it was officially introduced in the U.S. in October 1980, it gained popularity far higher than in Japan, called “Pac-Man fever.” It spawned a wide merchandising program with more than 400 items and a TV series with high ratings (56% of share) in the U.S., which resulted in receiving the “most successful coin-operated game machine” award from the Guinness World Records in June 2005. With new console and mobile games launching every year, its popularity has crossed the globe for over 40 years.

Pac-Man traverses the maze to collect Pac-Dots. In the original maze there were 240 Pac-Dots and 4 "power pellets". After collecting all the dots, Pac-Man moves on to the next stage and the difficulty increases.