Star Wars Money: Take that Watto

When Republic Credits won't do, you may want a more universally accepted form of payment.  The New Zealand Mint has just what you are looking for.  The first officially licensed Star Wars coins that are also actually legal tender.  The coins feature a Star Wars image on one side and the image of Queen Elizabeth II on the other.  The coins are legal tender of the small island country of NIUE.

Apparently the first wave of these coins are available for purchase now and they will be introducing new coins into 2014. 

At this time they have two expensive collectors sets ($391.01) for either the Darth Vader 1 oz Silver Coin set or the Millennium Falcon 10z Silver Coin set.  The Vader set contains a Stormtrooper, a Vader, a Return of the Jedi Emperor Palpatine, and a Battle of Endor Imperial Fleet coin.  The Falcon set includes  Luke/Leia, C-3P0/R2, Han/Chewie and Yoda/Obi-Wan coins.  They will mint up to 7,500 of these coins. 

Also available are the more affordably priced silver plated base metal coins, selling for $19.59 each.  There are 10 of these coins in the initial set. Luke, Leia, Obi-Wan, Yoda, R2-D2, C-3P0, Han, Chewie, Vader and Palpatine. They will only mint up to 50,000 of each of these coins.

To me this is much more fun then collecting State Quarters or Presidential Dollar coins.  After all, if I have to blast a punk bounty hunter in the cantina and toss the bartender a coin to cover the mess, I want it to be a Han Solo coin, that's how I roll.

For complete details and images of all the coins, please visit the New Zealand Mint.


SOURCES: Voxy.co.nz and NewZealandMint.com