Wolf joins growing pack of $20-for-$20 coins

The wraps are off on the seventh coin in the Royal Canadian Mint’s popular $20-for-$20 program, a series of silver coins being sold for face value. The newest coin in the series, the second of this year, depicts a wolf running toward the viewer. The coins are struck on .9999 silver blanks with a weight of 7.96 grams, or a quarter troy ounce. The reverse has the inscriptions “20 DOLLARS,” “2013,” “CANADA” and “FINE SILVER ARGENT PUR 9999.” The obverse has the Susanna Blunt effigy of Queen Elizabeth II. As with the other recent coins in the series, the mintage is 250,000 pieces, with a limit of three coins per household.

The first coin in the program, depicting maple leaves, had a mintage of 200,000 coins. The coins are sold for the face value, with no taxes charged, as they are bullion purity. When the face-value program was initiated in 2011, it caused some confusion, as some collectors assumed it was a step toward a circulating silver coin. However, the coin is a non-circulating legal tender issue. At the current price of silver, the coins contain approximately $7.50 worth of silver. For the coin to contain $20 worth of silver, the silver price would have to climb from just under $30 an ounce at present, to $80 per ounce. At press time, five of the earlier six coins had sold out, while the hockey-themed coin issued earlier this year was 93 per cent sold. The Mint accepts orders for the coins from only Canada and the United States.

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