Perth Mint Australian Lunar Series: The Complete Collector's Guide

The Australian Lunar series is the longest-running zodiac coin program in modern numismatics. The Perth Mint began it in 1996, and it is now three chapters and thirty years deep. This guide covers what the series actually is, how the three chapters differ, which year belongs to which animal, and what to check before buying a graded example.

What the series is

The Perth Mint issues one coin design per year, carrying the animal of that year in the Chinese zodiac, in a repeating twelve-year cycle. Each complete cycle is a numbered series. When the twelve animals are exhausted, the Mint retires the designs entirely and starts a new series with fresh artwork — which is why a Series I Dragon and a Series III Dragon are different coins, not reissues of the same one.

That structure is what separates the Lunar program from most world coin series. A collector is not accumulating one design in different years; they are assembling a set of twelve distinct designs, and then, if they continue, a second and third set of twelve. It also means every design has a hard end: once the year passes, the Perth Mint does not strike it again.

The coins are legal tender in Australia, carry a face value in Australian dollars, and are struck at the Perth Mint in Western Australia — the only mint of its era still operating on its original 1899 site.

The three chapters

Series I: 1996–2007

The original cycle. Gold was struck from the first year. Silver did not begin until 1999, with the Rabbit — there were no 1996 Mouse, 1997 Ox or 1998 Tiger silver coins issued at the time. This catches people out constantly, and it is worth knowing before you go looking for a complete twelve-coin Series I silver set.

Series I is the chapter where the scarcity is structural, and the reason is counter-intuitive. Every size was capped — but demand fell far short of those caps, so the numbers were fixed permanently at low levels. The 1 oz gold was capped at 30,000, and only three years ever reached it: the 2000 Dragon, 2001 Snake and 2002 Horse. The rest came in well under. The 1997 Ox finished at 13,709 pieces, the lowest 1 oz gold in the series. Five of the twelve came in below 17,000.

The fractionals go lower still, and are badly underappreciated. The 1996 Mouse quarter-ounce gold finished at 1,390 coins — the smallest regular-issue Series I gold mintage of all.

Silver was capped at 300,000 for the 1 oz and 500,000 for the half-ounce. No Series I silver coin ever reached its cap. The 1 oz ran between 63,644 (1999 Rabbit) and 118,697 (2000 Dragon) — between a fifth and two-fifths of what was allowed.

There is a second effect on top of the low numbers. Series I was produced before the program had the following it has now, so these coins were bought to be kept in drawers and albums, not submitted for certification. Survivors in the top grades are scarce out of proportion even to their mintages. Completing a Series I gold set in MS 70 is one of the harder projects in modern world numismatics.

Series II: 2008–2019

The chapter most collectors build sets in, and the one where the Mint changed how mintages work. Series II moved to a two-cap model: the 1 oz gold capped at 30,000 and the 1 oz silver at 300,000, with almost every other size struck to demand with no limit at all.

Both capped coins sold out in every one of the twelve years. That is worth sitting with, because it means something specific for buyers: in those two sizes there are no rare dates. A 2008 Mouse 1 oz gold and a 2019 Pig 1 oz gold have identical mintages. The scarcity in Series II lives entirely somewhere else.

It lives in the uncapped sizes, where actual production swung wildly. The 2008 Mouse and 2019 Pig — the bookends — are consistently the lowest across nearly every uncapped size. The 2008 Mouse kilo gold finished at 55 coins; its 10 oz gold at 128. Compare the 2012 Dragon half-ounce silver at 389,161 against the 2008 Mouse half-ounce at 17,114, and you have a twenty-three-fold spread inside one series.

A useful counter-intuitive point falls out of that: the Dragon is the most wanted animal in the cycle, which is exactly why Dragon-year coins are usually the most common in their series.

Series II also introduced the colorized and gilded variants that now sit among the harder pieces to find in MS 70. Those carry their own caps, well below the standard issues — the 2018 Dog 1 oz silver ran 170,000 colorized and 50,000 gilded against an uncapped standard issue.

Series III: 2020–2031

The current cycle, opening with the 2020 Mouse. It keeps the Series II cap structure exactly — 30,000 on the 1 oz gold, 300,000 on the 1 oz silver, both selling out each year — but drops the kilo and 10 kg gold entirely. Series III gold tops out at 10 oz.

The 2020 Mouse is the low across every gold size so far, in the same bookend pattern Series II showed.

Two obverse changes fall inside this series and are worth knowing, because they create genuine one-year types. The 2024 Dragon carries the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Obverse — Jody Clark's effigy supplemented with the dates of her reign — used for that year only. From the 2025 Snake onward the coins carry Dan Thorne's effigy of King Charles III.

Because Series III is current, condition expectations are higher. MS 70 and PF 70 are the working grades, and the scarcity sits in the variants. The 2026 Horse issued with a Dragon privy mark is capped at 30,000 in silver and 3,000 in gold — a tenth of the standard 1 oz gold cap, making it the scarcest regular-issue Series III gold coin to date. The silver version also carries a micro-laser-engraved letter on the reverse, visible only under magnification, as an authentication feature.

Which year is which animal

A note on naming: the Perth Mint uses Mouse, not Rat, and Goat, not Sheep or Ram, in its own product names and mintage documents. Other mints and marketplaces vary, which is a common source of mismatched listings.

One genuine oddity sits at the Series I / Series II join. In 2008, 2009 and 2010 the Perth Mint struck additional silver coins in the Series I design, to order, so collectors could complete a twelve-animal Series I silver set that had started three years late. Those ran alongside the Series II coins of the same animals. A 2008 Mouse 1 oz silver therefore exists in two entirely different designs, and listings confuse the two constantly.

Metals, sizes and purity

Gold has been .9999 fine throughout the program, with no change across the three series. Series I opened in 1996 with four sizes only — 1 oz, 1/4, 1/10 and 1/20. The range widened in 2000 with the Dragon, and the half-ounce arrived in 2004.

Silver was .999 fine from 1999 through the 2016 Monkey, and moved to .9999 fine from the 2017 Rooster onward. This catches people out: two silver Lunars of the same size from either side of 2017 are not the same specification, and the holder will say so. You will see sources claiming the whole program is .9999 silver. They are wrong.

Platinum is not a standard annual issue. A 1 oz platinum Mouse was struck in 2020 to mark the Series III launch.

How mintages actually work

This is the part most summaries get wrong. The Lunar series does not have one mintage policy — it has two, and which one applies determines whether a coin is genuinely scarce.

In Series I, everything was capped and almost nothing sold out. Every figure is fixed, published and mostly low. Scarcity is baked into the coin.

In Series II and III, two sizes are capped and sell out every year; everything else is struck to demand. The capped coins have no rare dates. The uncapped ones have no published ceiling, so their real mintages are only knowable after the fact — and they range from 55 pieces to nearly 400,000.

So a Series I Ox at 13,709 and a Series III privy-marked gold at 3,000 are scarce for completely different reasons, and a Series II 1 oz gold is not scarce at all in mintage terms, whatever year it carries. All three can still be worth owning. Knowing which is which is the difference between buying on evidence and buying on a story.

The Perth Mint publishes its own mintage figures for every series, in gold and silver, as free PDFs. They are the authoritative source and they are worth checking before any significant purchase: perthmint.com. Note that the Mint's Series III documents currently run only to 2022, so no official figures exist yet for the uncapped sizes from the 2023 Rabbit onward.

Grading, and why the population matters more than the mintage

On a modern series struck to a high standard, the mintage tells you how many exist. The population report tells you how many exist in the condition you are buying — and on Lunars those two numbers diverge sharply.

Lunar surfaces mark easily. The high-relief reverses introduced in Series II have broad open fields that show contact from the mint's own packaging, which is why a coin can be untouched by human hands and still grade MS 68. The gap between the MS 69 and MS 70 populations on a given year is frequently an order of magnitude.

The designations matter too, and they are not interchangeable:

• MS (Mint State) applies to business strikes; PR (PCGS) or PF (NGC) applies to proofs. A proof is not a better MS coin — it is a different production process.
• DCAM (PCGS) and Ultra Cameo (NGC) describe frost-to-mirror contrast on proofs. They are quality designations, not grades.
• First Strike (PCGS) and Early Releases (NGC) mean the coin was submitted within a defined window after release. They say nothing about strike quality or about the coin being among the first struck — the mints do not track that. PCGS works from the postmark on your submission; NGC works from when the coin arrives at NGC, and publishes separate cutoff dates for world coins depending on whether the submission originates in the country of issue.
• NGCX is NGC's ten-point scale, where a 10 corresponds to a traditional 70.

NGC also offers optional zodiac-animal labels for all twelve animals, by request, for a small additional fee. They are a holder feature, not a coin attribute.

Who designs them

Ing Ing Jong is the dominant Lunar artist. A Perth Mint staff designer since 2011, her first lunar was the 2013 Snake, and her credits run through the 2016 Monkey, 2017 Rooster, 2018 Dog, 2019 Pig, 2024 Dragon and 2026 Horse. On some releases she has designed separate imagery for the gold and the silver. Natasha Muhl designed the 2015 Goat; Sean Rogers the 2025 Snake.

What to check before you buy

1. Verify the certification number. Every NGC, PCGS and CACG holder carries a unique number that can be looked up on the grading service's own site. It confirms the coin, the grade, and how many others share it. If a seller will not give you the number before purchase, that is the answer.
2. Check the population at that grade, not the mintage. They are different questions, and on Series II and III standard issues the mintage tells you almost nothing.
3. Confirm the silver purity against the year. Through 2016 is .999; 2017 onward is .9999.
4. Match the animal to the year. Use the table above. Mislabeled listings are common on marketplaces, and a "Series I Tiger" dated 2010 is a Series II coin.
5. For a 2008, 2009 or 2010 silver coin, check which design it carries. Both series exist for those three animals.
6. Look at the actual coin. Two coins in the same grade are not equal. Ask for photographs of the specific slab, not a stock image.

Where to start

If you are beginning a set, the 1/20 oz gold cycle in Series II is the most attainable complete run. If you are collecting for rarity, Series I gold in MS 70 is the hardest, and the Series III capped variants are the most contested. If you want one coin, a Dragon — 2000, 2012 or 2024 — is the animal with the most consistent demand behind it, with the caveat that demand is exactly why it is the least scarce.

assay house holds the series across all three chapters. Every listing is a single certified coin, photographed in its own holder, with the grading service, grade and certification number stated so the population can be checked before purchase.

• All Australian Lunar coins
• Gold Lunar · Silver Lunar
• Series I (1996–2007) · Series II (2008–2019) · Series III (2020–2031)
• By animal: Dragon · Rabbit · Snake · Ox · Horse · Tiger · Goat · Monkey · Pig
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