Modern Numismatics
Louis Golino has been a collector of American and world coins since childhood and has written about coins since 2009. He writes about modern coins and other numismatic issues for Coin World. He is a founding member of the Modern Coin Forum.
RCM Launches Huge Star Trek Tribute
On September 8, 1966 NBC launched the original Star Trek television series that ran for three seasons and inspired decades of successor television series and big-budget films that have developed a cult-like following from its fans, known as Trekkies.
The first tv series' main character was Capt. William Tiberius Kirk, who commanded the U.S.S. Enterprise for the Starfleet command during the 23rd century. Kirk was of course played by Canadian actor, William Shatner, who became a household name from this series. The other best-known character was Spock, half human and half Vulcan, played by Leonard Nimoy, who passed away last year.
There are all kinds of Canadian connections to the original Star Trek series such as a town in Alberta called Vulcan to other actors in the series besides Mr. Shatner who were Canadian such as James Doohan, who played Scotty, and others.
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To mark the golden anniversary of this beloved series the Royal Canadian Mint on June 13 launched a series of 11 coins.
These include one of its $20 face value silver coins depicting the U.S.S. Enterprise; a four-coin set of half-ounce colored silver coins depicting the most well-known characters from the series; another four-coin colored silver set in this case weighing one ounce each that depict some of the most popular episodes such as "The Trouble with Tribbles"; a coin and stamp set with a base metal quarter showing the spaceship from many different angles; and finally a half-ounce gold coin in the delta-shape of the insignia worn by crew members. The two four-coin sets begin now with the remaining issues coming every three months.
It's an impressive line-up of coins for sure and one that will have considerable appeal for Trekkies and for coin collectors, especially those in their mid-50s or older who watched the first series as a child like myself. By the time I was watching it with my friends in the late 1960s it was already in syndication. And the combination of living at the time in the same neighborhood as both William Shatner and Neil Armstrong and being a young boy in the era of Star Trek and Apollo 11 has left a soft spot in me for the series and for space travel and science fiction in general. I will never forget meeting Mr. Armstrong as they were packing up to move to Ohio.
And for those collectors who really love Star Trek these coins will go nicely with their set of 10 issues from the Perth Mint plus the gold latinum slip that was released recently. And more coins are rumored to be coming later from Perth for the 50th anniversary of the first series. Beam me up, Scotty!
On Monday, May 16 the Canadian Royal Mint announced that 70% of the 11,500 mintage of the first of the colored 1-oz. proof coins have been sold since Friday.