The Sino-Foreign Friendship Commemorative Pandas

Since 1984, China's official Mints have struck many commemorative Pandas with classic designs. The mintage of these impressive commemorative Pandas is very limited, from 99 to several thousand. Their designs and craftsmanship are also superior to the B.U. Panda coins. This is probably because the artists of the commemorative Pandas have fewer restrictions on their work. Moreover, the relatively small mintages of the commemoratives permit a better focus on quality.

In addition to the commonly used gold, silver, brass, copper and nickel-plated copper the Sinoforeign friendship commemorative Pandas are even struck in platinum and palladium. The weights range from 1/10 oz. of gold to 1 kilo of silver. Recently, plate-shaped intaglio advanced technology has been used for striking the Macau Numismatic Society Annual Expo commemorative Pandas at the Shanghai Mint. More interestingly, the Moon Festival 1 kilo silver commemorative Pandas struck by the Shengyang Mint are inlaid with gold that was carried by a spaceship.

The great artistic creativity of the senior designers is displayed in the animated Chinese Panda designs and the exotic historical architectures represented on the commemoratives. They also attest to the history of Sino-foreign friendship. The commemorative Pandas mintages are only a tiny fraction of the number of Panda coins minted. So the sense of accomplishment in collecting a master set of all the commemorative Pandas can rival that of having a 1 kilo. gold coin with a limited mintage of 10 pieces. It is not very hard to collect a master set that includes every B.U. gold Panda coin struck since 1982 if you are adequately financed. It is much harder to collect a master set of the commemorative Pandas.

Compared to the commemorative Pandas issued in recent years, the mintage of the early commemorative Pandas is a little more. However, it is hard to find these older commemorative Pandas. That is because they were mostly customized for foreign coin expositions (especially in Europe) and were initially struck in small mintages for sale at the shows (and the COAs were often written manually by the staff). Most of the buyers were collectors. To make it worse, many commemorative Pandas were later melted down. So the number of surviving early commemorative Pandas is very small today. It is a challenging and interesting project to collect a master set that include all the commemorative Pandas.

The commemorative Pandas have long been ignored by collectors. They sold at the price of their metal content until 2000, but few collectors were interested in them. Some rarities such as the 1994 Munich International Coin Show 1 kilo. silver commemorative Panda with limited mintage to 99 are harder to find, but such a rare one was only sold for 50,000 to 60,000 RMB at that time.
 

  
2014 Macau Numismatic Society Annual Expo gold and silver commemorative Pandas

The commemorative Pandas, like Panda coins, are all struck by the Chinese official mints and are designed by the mints' senior designers. They are more and more appreciated by collectors now. The above-mentioned 1994 Munich 1 kilo. silver commemorative Panda has risen as high as 700,000 RMB, but it is still hard to find one. A No. 1 gold and silver set of 2014 Macau Numismatic Society Annual Expo commemorative Pandas realized 500,000 HKD.