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Royal Mint issue David Bowie £5 coin

Limited edition coins celebrate David Bowie

By Paul Sinclair

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86

The Royal Mint in the UK have produced a special commemorative David Bowie £5 coin in recognition of his contribution to British music.

The third coin in their Music Legends collection features an image of Berlin-era Bowie against the distinctive Aladdin Sane lightning bolt motif (the design is by artist Jody Clark). The Royal Mint actually recently sent one of these coins into space. It was carried by a balloon to an altitude of 35,656 metres before descending back to Britain! A first, apparently.


David Bowie 2020 £5 Brilliant Uncirculated Coin – Edition 1

There are eight different editions of the coin available from the relatively cheap ‘Uncirculated Coin’ editions (£13-£15, some of which come with posters) to the – deep breath – £2425 one ounce ‘Gold Proof Coin’ edition (now sold out).

A ‘Half Ounce Silver Proof’ edition‘ at £65 is perhaps a good compromise between the ‘basic’ version and the expensive luxury of gold and is presented in a unique and attractive acrylic block (see below).

Meanwhile, aone ounce ‘Silver Proof’ coin is just under £100 and uniquely offers colour printing and is the only coin in the core range to feature edge lettering.

All the various 2020 David Bowie editions (apart from the now sold out 1oz Gold Proof coin) are available via The Royal Mint website. Queen and Elton John are the previous artists that have had commemorative coins issued.

Browse the entire David Bowie collection via The Royal Mint website or pick out some highlights below:

The Quarter Ounce Gold Proof coin is limited to 1,300 units.

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86 Comments

86 thoughts on “Royal Mint issue David Bowie £5 coin”

  1. Pingback: SDE talks to the man who spent £10k on the Steven Wilson ‘Ultra Deluxe’ TFB box | superdeluxeedition

  2. Hi. Just a few words to tell you how kind the Royal Mint had been with me : living in France i ordered the 5 pounds Bowie silver coin for 12,50 with 12,50 costs for postage on the 18 th december. Nothing arrived on the 26 of January i join thé customer service : they forgot to despatch my médal.
    They apologize deeply. Results : i got the package today (a superb item , a collector with poster ) and i was refund by the Royal Mint of the amount! Grab the deal !!!!
    Collectors informations: there are 27 stars on the coin ont for each bowie album.
    Good evening from Nice.

  4. You can buy them on the Warner Australia site for AUD $20.00 each plus AUD $3.00 shipping. I didn’t know this originally and paid double that for the first release from Dig in the UK. The second & third releases arrived in Melbourne in the mail promptly & well packed. Overall, at this great price, I intend to buy them all & the box at the end.

    On another note, Paul McCartney’s new CD is being sold for a NONSENSICAL AUD $38.99 at Australia’s biggest music retailer JB HI FI. This is the basic, standard edition with the black & white cover! Normally new release CDs retail between AUD $20.00 – $27.00, so this feels like extortion!

    Will buy McCartney online on WOWHD for AUD $23.09 instead!

    1. The first half of the above comment relates to the Brilliant Live Adventure CDs – not the coins! :)

      The comment is a response to one made below about the live releases and appears to have been duplicated up here in error.

  6. These coins look really cool, and I wish you had not advertised this Paul because now I want it, and it’s just memorabilia. You could potentially open pandora’s box for many people.
    I think in a way it’s like HMV moving away from selling music to selling t-shirts and mugs.
    So, in short, please please don’t show us again, as cool as these are.
    No offence.

  7. Hello Paul you are completely right: buying boxes set and Deluxe édition i am interested too in searching these type of collectibles . I recently buy Floyd or Bowie stamps through Royal Mail and ordered the 1st édition coin this time. Thank you . Merry Christmas from The Riviéra France

    1. That’s a shame, some of my nicest things are….

      My original 1987 “The Lilac Time” T-Shirt
      My original Premiere of Tubular Bells II T-Shirt
      Starting the day with a cup of Yorkshire Tea in my Never For Ever mug.

      Been all over the world in them and my eldest daughter, now 25, regularly facetimes from New Zealand in my Original Super Mango T-Shirt or my Return to Ommadawn.

      The little bugger even nicked my Matt Berry TV themes T-shirt to take back with her in September without telling me….

      They are fun. End of. No they aren’t music but over the years they have added a lot to my life, Yes it’s just a T-Shirt but I don’t have any other clothes from 1987 or 1992 so they must have meant something and they plainly mean something to my daughter or she wouldn’t keep taking the bloody things.

  11. No pre order links yet for the cream coloured 7” single? Maybe its getting like ticket sales, where they wont mention the rip off price until its actually released.
    Bah humbug…

  13. For me, the main problem is that there will be no Bowie release at the fifth day of his death – a special edition of “Blackstar”, for example. What a shame …!

    1. There is a 7″ of two unreleased covers – Trying To Get To Heaven (Dylan) and Mother (Lennon) – coming out on that day. 8,147 copies with 1,000 on cream vinyl.

  14. Am I the only one who thinks the background looks very Stars N’ Stripesey? Kind of reminds me of Evel Knieval circa 1975. I used mine to buy some fish and chips and got 2 Baal Picture Disc 7″‘s as change. Heck of a job putting them in the charity box on the counter.

  15. “A balloon” can never even come close to “space”, and 35,656 metres (22.15 miles) is not even half the distance to what is considered the lowest altitiude considered to be nearing “space”… which is 50 miles.

  16. Also, if you are collecting the cd’s or lp’s of the David Bowie “Brilliant Live Adventures” Box, there are now 3 albums released (including pre-order):

    1. Ouvrez Le Chien
    2. No Trendy Réchauffé
    3. LiveAndWell.com (released for pre-order today)

    There will be 6 live albums all together. The empty physical collection box is sold out but will be made available again with the release of the 6th live album. It costs me $25 to order each album so at the end this will have cost me $150 + $25 for the empty box is $175!!
    Good grief I’m a sucker.

      1. You can buy them on the Warner Australia site for AUD $20.00 each plus AUD $3.00 shipping. I didn’t know this originally and paid double that for the first release from Dig in the UK. The second & third releases arrived in Melbourne in the mail promptly & well packed. Overall, at this great price, I intend to buy them all & the box at the end.

        On another note, Paul McCartney’s new CD is being sold for a NONSENSICAL AUD $38.99 at Australia’s biggest music retailer JB HI FI. This is the basic, standard edition with the black & white cover! Normally new release CDs retail between AUD $20.00 – $27.00, so this feels like extortion!

        Will buy McCartney online on WOWHD for AUD $23.09 instead!

    2. Curiously, in Europe, Liveandwell.com was made available for pre-order last Friday (11th).
      The vinyl edition sold out within 24 hours at both Dig! and the DB online store.

  17. Never Let Me Down…The Back Of The Sofa
    When I’m 5…Quid
    Pound and Vision
    Loose…Changes
    Look Back In Wonga

    There must be tons of puns we can make!

  18. The man who sold the world indeed….roll up roll up!

    Get your coin worth £5 . . . only £13. . . !

    Davey jones must be turning in his grave (no, not THAT Davey Jones)

    What will be thrust upon us next, I wonder, oh little wonder, little wonder, you……?

    Diamond Dogs?
    Glass Spider?
    Quicksand?
    Hole in the ground?
    Moss Garden?

    . . . . or a Laughing Gnome?

  19. These aren’t for me but I am surprised to see just how many they produce of the “limited editions”. I’m amazed that there is apparently such a large market for this sort of stuff.

    I wish they’d produce more of the limited edition live albums and I am sure that getting the 2021 birthday single (0nly 8147 of them) is clearly going to be difficult.

    Being a Bowie fan is difficult and annoying at present. I am happy that I have all of the Brilliant Live Adventures that have gone on sale so far but the newest one Liveandwell.com sold out so fast that a load must have gone to scalpers.

    His music brings me so much pleasure but I am really not liking the current marketing of the catalogue.

  24. Possibly dumb question: is “The Royal Mint” the UK government mint, or a private outfit? In the US, we have these “collectors” outfits that mint commemorative coins/plates/etc, with official-sounding names like “The Franklin Mint”, but they aren’t official currency outlets. Just curious…

  25. Looks like the gold 1 ounce coin was selling at roughly 1,000 pounds over the price of other ounce coins produced by the Royal Mint. Somebody apparently believes they can obtain a major collector premium for these.

    Whop wop wop…

  29. 20+ years ago my brother found one of these commemorative £5 coins at a car boot sale.

    It had obviously been out in the rain a few times and had gotten stuck to the cheap faux presentation box it came in and after my brother had pointed it out the lady said “oh go on then , give me 50p for it”

    He did and once out of ear-shot ripped the coin out of its damaged box and Immediately spent it on a £5 packet of cigarettes

      1. Paul, all respect etc But this is NOT an SDE of any kind. Is it music? no. Does it play? no. Can you listen to it? no. Please dont devalue the site with this, and i mean it politely, pish. What’s next stamps and “OCDE”- Other Collectible Deluxe Edition”? It is below you and us.

        Anyway, Merry Christmas to everyone and yourself on SDE.

        1. I happen to think people that buy physical music product, especially box sets that contain trinkets and memorabilia might be interested in this. It is vaguely interesting news that it’s happening, is it not? Even if it’s not your cup of tea. People are aware of it, even if they think it’s ‘tat’. Funny you should mention stamps, I’m AM interested in rock/pop related stamps and first day covers etc. People that are collectors, like to collect things. What’s the difference between this and going to a Kate Bush gig and buying a mug and ‘KT Fellowship Rescue Kit’ ?

          1. V true. Got some lovely Beatles first edition stamps myself. must find them!! my mum also gave me Negatives of photos of them from Caird Hall Dundee in the 60.s, never published. Shite. They are in this house somewhere!! not being a dik. this is actually true. will hunt the down and try and send u pics too.

          2. Agree, anything related to a collectible artist is interesting to those of us who do collect that artist. I don’t only buy records, I buy films, books, magazines and for Bowie, even the Barbie doll, so keep up the good work. I think SDE is a collector’s site, and as such, should publish news like this.

  33. I’m glad I’m not a Bowie collector. They’ve missed a trick here though, they could’ve created £50 notes, one for each album. BUT…it’s random, you pay 50 quid and wait to see which one turns up, ha ha ha.

  35. It’s kind of fun, but the portrait is off, I’m not excatly sure what it is that os off, but that does not look like Bowie, the artist should have spend more time on the likeness.

  36. Oh dear, how corny! Even Bowie himself rejected this coin “initiative”, as tasteless to start with. I’m convinced. Not his style at all.

      3. I like the design of the watch, unlike the coins.

        There’s one in the window of a jeweller in a shopping centre near me.
        It’s being there for months now.
        The 1750 euro price tag might be why.

  37. Paul, I must inquire as to which Bowie coin (or coins) I should need to purchase in order to acquire a pink and black swirl 18o-gram McKenzie 50 sweater – the one with the etching of that clever sheep over under the elm on the back, if you still have any in stock.

  39. Here in the northeast USA, I just came in from shoveling a foot of snow. Picked up my phone and read all the hilarious comments. Thanks everyone, genuinely funny stuff.

  46. The first thing i noticed…. the stripe is Aladdin Sane 1973… but the engraved image of Bowie is more like Lets Dance – Never Let Me Down era 83-87. Wonky.

    All the Best – Jeff

  47. Put it between your teeth you maybe one of the lucky collectors who get one of the chocolate coins, although the mint ones are probably nice as well

  48. Content inflation. The standard coin actually makes him look like a Formula 1 racing driver. Which might make some archaeologists from the year 20,000 a bit confused.

  52. I’m surprised the Mint didn’t liaise with Dave’s record label and issue instead an annoying and wholly inconvenient box set of 500 pennies instead of a sensible compilation of that value in one coin…

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