2007 The Ashes One Dollar
In 1882 an Australian cricket team beat the English cricket team on the spiritual home of cricket, Lords. This was the first Australian team to beat an English team in England and the next day saw a mock obituary placed in The Sporting Times (the major sporting newspaper of the time) stating that English cricket had died, and the body would be cremated and the ashes would be taken to Australia. The following year an English cricket team toured Australia in what was dubbed 'the quest to regain The Ashes'. While in Australia the English team was presented with a small ceramic funeral urn that reputedly contained the ashes of a burned cricket bail. This saw the test matches played between England and Australia, now known as 'The Ashes', cemented into the sporting folklore of both countries and the rivalry continues until this very day. 2007 saw the 125th anniversary of the birth of The Ashes and the RAM celebrated this with the release of a standard composition dollar coin. The coin was not released into general circulation and was an NCLT release only.
The obverse of the coin shows the Ian Rank-Broadley portrait of the Queen of England. The reverse, modeled by Wojciech Pietranik, depicts a mock coat of arms with the British Lion and the Australian Kangaroo against a representation of the famous old urn above crossed cricket bats. 41,438 of the Aluminium Bronze dollars were minted into numbered collector cards, and 8,000 were available in the 2007 Ashes PNC.
7,750 coins were minted in 99.9% silver and 2,315 were minted in gold. These were not standard dollar coins in either size, mass, or face value. Interestingly 5 of the silver coins were donated to Cricket Australia for each of the 5 tests of the 2007 Ashes Series. They were specially framed and mounted and auctioned for charity where they achieved prices ranging from $5,000 to $11,000.
Posted by mnemtsas at November 3, 2009 12:43 PM
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