The Pobjoy Mint will release a new design featuring Father Christmas on several 2019 coins for Gibraltar, following on the success of a similar program a year ago.

The program’s Father Christmas character is derived from a British children’s book written and illustrated by Raymond Briggs published in the 1970s. 

Briggs’s Father Christmas is similar to Santa Claus, the corpulent, jolly character familiar to many collectors, but in lieu of a fantasy character, Father Christmas is an everyman. He deals with problems around the house and lives with his pets and two reindeer.

Pobjoy’s coins will feature an illustration from Raymond Briggs’s book of Father Christmas with his dog at his feet and his cat sitting on his shoulder. Inscriptions read FATHER CHRISTMAS above and FIFTY PENCE below Father Christmas and his pets. 

The obverse of the coin features an effigy of Queen Elizabeth II, like other Commonwealth coins.

All of the coins measure 27.3 millimeters in diameter.

The colorized copper-nickel version of the fifty-pence coin with a diamond finish is presented in a Christmas card, and the noncolorized version is issued with another decorative card. 

Those two Uncirculated coins weigh 8 grams each and will have a combined mintage of 8,500 coins.

The plain coin will be offered for $14.95 and the colorized version for $15.95.

The silver and gold coins in the program will each be packaged in a red box with a certificate of authenticity. Each silver and gold coin is struck “exclusively for a client,” according to Pobjoy.

The Proof .925 fine silver coin, which is colorized, weighs 8 grams and has a mintage limit of 4,500 pieces. The 2019 coin’s retail price is not yet announced.

The piedfort Proof .925 fine silver coin, also colorized, weighs 16 grams, and will have a mintage limit of 1,500 pieces. Its retail price is listed as $119. 

The Proof .9167 fine gold coin weighs 8 grams, and 299 pieces will be struck at most. The piedfort .9167 fine gold coin’s mintage limit will be 99 coins, each weighing 16 grams.

Prices for the gold coins will be determined when the coins are ordered.

For more details, or to order a coin, visit the Pobjoy Mint website.

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