The Canadian Platinum Maple Leaf is the official bullion

platinum coin Platinum coins are a form of currency. Platinum has an international currency symbol under ISO 4217 of XPT. The issues of legitimate platinum coins were initiated by Spain in Spanish-colonized America in the 18th century and continued by the Rus ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. First issued by the

Royal Canadian Mint }) is the mint of Canada and a Crown corporation, operating under the ''Royal Canadian Mint Act''. The shares of the Mint are held in trust for the Crown in right of Canada. The Mint produces all of Canada's circulation coins, and manufacture ...

in 1988, it was available until 2002 in five different denominations, all of which are marked as containing .9995 pure

platinum Platinum is a chemical element with the symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name originates from Spanish , a diminutive of "silver". Pla ...

. The

bullion coin Bullion is non-ferrous metal that has been refined to a high standard of elemental purity. The term is ordinarily applied to bulk metal used in the production of coins and especially to precious metals such as gold and silver. It comes fro ...

was partly reintroduced in 2009 in the form of the 1

troy ounce Troy weight is a system of units of mass that originated in 15th-century England, and is primarily used in the precious metals industry. The troy weight units are the grain, the pennyweight (24 grains), the troy ounce (20 pennyweights), and th ...

denomination in .9999 purity, featuring a new portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on the

obverse Obverse and its opposite, reverse, refer to the two flat faces of coins and some other two-sided objects, including paper money, flags, seals, medals, drawings, old master prints and other works of art, and printed fabrics. In this usage, ...

. The coins have

legal tender Legal tender is a form of money that courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment for any monetary debt. Each jurisdiction determines what is legal tender, but essentially it is anything which when offered ("tendered") in ...

status in Canada, but as is often the case with bullion coins, the face values of these coins is lower than the market price of the material they are made from.

Background

The Canadian Maple Leaf series began in 1979, when the

(RCM) introduced the

Canadian Gold Maple Leaf The Canadian Gold Maple Leaf (GML) is a gold bullion coin that is issued annually by the Government of Canada. It is produced by the Royal Canadian Mint. The Gold Maple Leaf is legal tender with a face value of 50 Canadian dollars. The market ...

coin. It consisted of 1

of .999 pure gold – later refined to .9999 pure in 1984 – and contained no

alloy An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which at least one is a metal. Unlike chemical compounds with metallic bases, an alloy will retain all the properties of a metal in the resulting material, such as electrical conductivity, ductilit ...

s within it; a rarity at the time. Due to the widespread success of the coin on the international bullion market – which saw the Gold Maple Leaf secure "the top sales spot" to become "the world's most successful gold coin" – the Mint decided to introduce

silver Silver is a chemical element with the symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical ...

and

bullion coins to the series in 1988. In that year,

ranked third in the world in platinum production, trailing only

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

and the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

History

The production of Platinum Maple Leaf coins began on September 22, 1988, at a "special striking ceremony" organized by the RCM, where the first Canadian Silver Maple Leaf was also made. The president of the largest precious metal distributor in Japan, Junichiro Tanaka, was given the honour of striking the first platinum coin with a coin press weighing 140

tonne The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...

s. At the time, the Gold Maple Leaf was extremely popular in Japan, with 1.1 million ounces of the coin sold there from 1984 onwards. This represented more than 70% of the market share in that country. Both coins were first made available for sale to the public on November 17 of that same year. The platinum coins were made of .9995 pure platinum in four denominations of different sizes, consisting of 1

(oz), oz, oz, and oz. bearing the face values of $50, $20, $10, and $5, respectively. Their actual value, however, is determined by the daily market price of platinum. These coins featured the effigy of Queen Elizabeth II designed by

Arnold Machin Arnold Machin OBE, R.A., FRSS (; 30 September 1911 – 9 March 1999) was a British artist, sculptor, and coin and postage stamp designer. Life Machin was born Stoke-on-Trent in 1911. He started work at the age of 14 as an apprentice china pa ...

, which was also used in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and throughout the

Commonwealth of Nations The Commonwealth of Nations, simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the ...

, and continued to be used on

Canadian coins The coins of Canada are produced by the Royal Canadian Mint and denominated in Canadian dollars ($) and the subunit of dollars, cents (¢). An effigy of the reigning monarch always appears on the obverse of all coins. There are standard images wh ...

until 1989. Coins made of oz platinum with a face value of $1 were subsequently released in 1993, with the intention of attracting the small investment and jewelry sectors. On December 15, 1988, almost a month after the Platinum Maple Leaf was first sold,

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...

announced that it was testing out a new material for its

catalytic converter A catalytic converter is an vehicle emissions control, exhaust emission control device that converts toxic gases and pollutants in exhaust gas from an internal combustion engine into less-toxic pollutants by catalysis, catalyzing a redox chemic ...

s that would replace platinum. This led to fears that the sale of the platinum coins would decrease, as the

automotive industry The automotive industry comprises a wide range of companies and organizations involved in the design, development, manufacturing, marketing, and selling of motor vehicles. It is one of the world's largest industries by revenue (from 16 % such ...

was responsible for approximately a third of platinum consumption. Although the sales of the Platinum Maple Leaf more than doubled from 1990 to 1991 – increasing from 18,000 ounces to 39,000 ounces – this was primarily because the price of the precious metal had "dropped substantially". For a short time during the earlier part of 1991, platinum had actually become less valuable than

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

. However, the situation reversed by the latter part of the decade, when the increased interest in platinum caused the coin's prices to rapidly increase. Because of this, the platinum market suddenly cooled off, and the RCM stopped minting Platinum Maple Leaf coins after 2002. However, they began producing the coin again in 2009, this time featuring the effigy of Queen Elizabeth II designed by Susanna Blunt back in 2003. In 2012, the Platinum Maple Leaf was "the world's best selling platinum coin".

Series

References

{{Portal bar, Canada, Money, Numismatics Platinum Maple Leaf Platinum bullion coins

Background

History

Series

See also

References