AMMONITE World of Evolution 1 Oz Silver Coin 1000 Fr Burkina Faso 2016

This latest series is called World of Evolution and is a clever mix of adornment and minting. The struck coin is basically acting as a backdrop here. Depicting a mass of ammonite shells, it appears to represent a mass death of the creatures, a not uncommon event and one that often leaves superb fossil evidence. It’s a very appropriate backdrop for the coins main distinguishing feature, an actual fossil.

Ammonites come in a huge range of sizes and are common fossils, so finding suitable samples for the 500 coins being minted wouldn’t have been that hard. Sliced lengthways and then highly polished, these make beautiful and elegant fossils. We’ve seen almost identical fossils, finished like this, coming from Madagascar where they are quite common. Whether coin collectors take to what is essentially a stuck-on object will be interesting to see. While the coin is clearly designed to have the fossil on it, there’s no attempt to actually physically integrate the fossil into it, no doubt because ammonite fossils vary in exact size and shape making standardising a cut-out very difficult.