Three New Cook Island Collector Coins: Bees, Painting, and the PGA

CoinWeek would like to bring to your attention three new Cook Island Collector Coins struck by B.H. Mayer’s Kunstprägeanstalt GmbH.

Shades of Nature – Bee

“Sweet as honey” – the yellow nectar has always been the epitome of sweetness. And the honey-producing bees rightfully deserve the phrase «to be busy as a bee». They go through enormous troubles to produce the delicious food. The tiny animals have to fly out and collect nectar some 100,000 times before one glass of honey ends up on our kitchen table for breakfast!

Since antiquity, bees have been a popular numismatic motif due to their proverbial diligence and the fact that they live in ‘states’ just like humans. Collectors and numismatists will remember the coins of Ephesus or the Prize Medals for Diligence of the 19th century. Though beautiful in their own right, these ancient depictions remain schematic by comparison. Only modern laser technology has achieved a richness of detail which illustrates nature in all its variety and beauty.

Depicted on this coin is a silver bee on a gilded flower. The delicate pistils stretch out to present their stigma to the bee so it can suck out the sweet nectar with its proboscis. The bee stores the nectar in a special organ, the honey sac, and returns to its nest. The nectar will later be transformed into honey. But the flowers don’t give away their treasure for free. In return for the nectar, the bees help with the plants’ reproduction. Every detail of the body, perfectly designed for its task, is recognizable on the coin: the furry body shines through the paper-thin wings and even the wing venation is visible to the naked eye. You can also clearly make out the tibia, the bigger middle part of the hind legs. The fringe of hairs on it absorbs the pollen like a duster. With the thinner end of the legs, the pollen comb, the bee removes the pollen later on. However, when it lands on the next flower enough pollen will fall off to secure the plants’ pollination and reproduction. Around 150 different crop plants and 80 percent of all wild plants in Europe depend on pollination by bees. The animals thus generate an annual ‘revenue’ of 14.2 billion Euros. The tasty honey not yet included!

Paint Your Coin – First Love

Wherever you look, love is in the air – in music, in literature, in art, everywhere around us. And who doesn’t like to reminisce about his first love? People have been trying to describe what happens when you fall in love for thousands of years. The old Romans thought people in love were ‘crazy’, we have ‘butterflies in our stomach’ or see the world ‘through rose-colored glasses’. Today, science can account for the symptoms which in former times could only be described metaphorically. If you fall in love, your hormones go wild. The level of the ‘happy hormone’ serotonin is surprisingly low – as low as that of neurotics. The ‘craziness’ may stem from the obsession with the object of our love. Production of other hormones, such as the ‘cuddle hormone’ oxytocin or the reward hormone dopamine, on the other hand, increases.

This state can last up to two or three years before everyday life catches up. And it is probably a good thing because constantly being in love might be slightly unhealthy – just think about the lack of appetite, often accompanied by a longing for the beloved, insomnia, the long hours of hoping and trembling. People usually remember their first love particularly well, when everything was still new and unfamiliar.

The new coin is to remember this moment. For the first time, a coin engages the collector in the designing process. The balloons can be individually painted with the included brush and paint so that each coin is unique.

PGA Tour – Golf Bag

PGA TOUR is the main organiser of several golf tours. Among them, the PGA Tour is the highest-paying golf tour worldwide: in 2010, the total prize money was $270 million. PGA TOUR organises more than 40 events a year and 2014 is the 99th year since the foundation of the non-profit-organisation.

A major aspect is an athletic challenge. World-class players, above all from North America, compete in the tournaments under the condition that they already deliver top performances in the play-offs. The public interest in the event also generates high revenues. In 2005, some 715 million viewers worldwide watched the events on TV and the live tournaments attracted crowds of people as well. All the money not used to cover the event costs is donated to charity by PGA TOUR. With 1 billion US dollars, the event generated an all-time high donation sum in 2005. But already in 2013, revenues almost doubled this extraordinary sum.

All of the coins mentioned above are legal tender of the Cook Islands and are minted by B.H. Mayer’s Kunstprägeanstalt GmbH. Collectors can purchase the issue through specialty dealers.