10 Lesser-Known Silver Coins in My Stack (Who Really Makes Them?)

I laid ten coins on the table that are not the big three. No Eagles, no Maples, no Britannias. Each is roughly an ounce of silver, and each has a strange little story about who actually made it and whose coin it really is. Go through them and a pattern shows up that changes how you should think about buying this kind of coin.

How a tiny country gets a famous coin

A small country or territory can issue its own legal tender. It puts a face value on the coin, so it is technically money in that place, then hires a mint somewhere else to strike it. That is how a territory with fewer people than a small town ends up with a well-known silver coin.

The metal is the same everywhere: one troy ounce, usually .999 fine or .9999 fine. What differs is the design, the story, and how easy the coin is to sell later.

Two coins from Malta

The 2026 Malta Golden Eagle is a 5-euro coin with 1 oz of .9999 silver, about 38.6 mm across, struck by the Germania Mint for the Central Bank of Malta. A golden eagle fights a serpent amid waves standing for the Mediterranean. The reverse is a wreath based on a ceiling painting in the Grandmaster’s Palace in Valletta. There is a limited black-plated edition of about 1,000, and the standard brilliant uncirculated version I own. One dealer lists that BU mintage at roughly 10,000, though I’d verify that.

The Maltese Cross is also a 5-euro, 1 oz .9999 coin from the Central Bank of Malta, about 38.5 mm, but it is struck by the Pressburg Mint. The eight points of the cross are said to represent the obligations of the Knights of Malta. Mintage depends on who you ask: one dealer says 1 million for 2025, another says there is no cap. Next to the Golden Eagle’s roughly 10,000, these are very different animals. One is a stacking coin and the other a small collector piece.

The Teddy Roosevelt knife

This one is 2 oz of silver shaped like the hunting knife Teddy Roosevelt carried on safari in 1909. The original sold at auction in 2016 for $414,000. The blade came from J. Russell & Company and the handle from the New York jeweler Dreicer & Company, with a gold eagle head and garnet eyes. It comes from the Singapore-based Specters, which makes coins shaped like weapons and artifacts. The premium here is mostly art and story. I received this one free from Specters to raise awareness, so weigh that accordingly.

The Czech Lion, and why it has a king on it

The lion is the heraldic double-tailed white lion of Bohemia, the region’s main emblem since the 13th century, wearing the crown of Saint Wenceslas. That crown is real. It was made in the mid-1300s for Charles IV and is kept in Saint Vitus Cathedral behind seven locks, with the keys held by seven different officials including the Czech president.

So why is a British king on the front? Because this is not a coin of the Czech Republic. It is legal tender of Niue, a self-governing Pacific island of about 1,700 people whose head of state is the King of New Zealand, currently Charles III. You get a coin made in Prague, issued by a Pacific island, with a British king on one side and a Bohemian lion on the other. The Czech Mint has made gold and silver lions since 2017, and the design changes a bit each year.

Two Royal Mint coins

The 2021 Royal Arms is a £2 coin with 1 oz of .999 silver and a reeded edge. The reverse shows the Royal Arms supported by a lion and a unicorn, and the obverse carries Queen Elizabeth II. Since she died in September 2022, 2021 is one of the last years with her portrait, which makes it a snapshot of a reign. I picked it up at a local coin shop because I hadn’t seen it before.

The 2026 British Angel is one of my favorites. It is a £2, .999 silver, 38.61 mm coin with King Charles III on the front and St. Michael slaying a dragon on the back, with a Latin inscription meaning “by your cross save us, Christ our redeemer.” The original gold angel was first issued under Edward IV in the 1400s and stayed in production until the mid-1600s. It was used in “touching” ceremonies where the monarch touched people suffering from the king’s evil and gave them a coin, and many surviving angels have a small hole because people wore them as charms. One dealer lists the proof version at 1,465 pieces, matching the original year, while another says 3,000, so take that with a grain of salt.

Southern Cross and Barbados Trident

The 2026 Southern Cross is a $2, 1 oz .9999 high-relief coin with 1.5 mm of relief, 40 mm across and 4 mm thick, made by ABC Bullion in Australia. A kangaroo and an emu, the two animals on the Australian coat of arms, look up at the Southern Cross, with Charles III on the other side. I bought it on sale because I had no high-relief coin, but in person I found it less impressive than expected, and the emu looks like it has an extra leg.

The 2025 Barbados Trident has a half-dollar face value, 1 oz of silver, a smooth edge, and is struck by the Scottsdale Mint in Arizona. One side has the Barbados coat of arms with a pelican and a dolphin, the other a trident head against radiating waves that look great in person. Barbados became a republic in November 2021 and removed the Queen as head of state, so unlike nearly every other coin here there is no monarch on it. It is the ninth release in the series, and mintage is listed anywhere from 1 million to 10 million depending on the source, so it is not rare.

St. Helena and the Canadian Cougar

The 2021 St. Helena Queen’s Virtues comes from the British overseas territory in the South Atlantic where Napoleon spent his final exile. It is the first of six coins in the series, with a £1 face value and 1 oz of silver. Victory is the first design, a winged figure holding a palm branch. The portrait is an older effigy of Elizabeth II that was used on British coins from 1985 to 1997, so the coin deliberately shows the Queen as she looked decades earlier. A caution: JM Bullion notes these often arrive with nicks, scratches and minor dents, and mine has a small dent on the cheek.

The 2016 Canadian Cougar is the oldest in this group. It is the first coin in the four-coin Predator series from the Royal Canadian Mint, in .9999 silver, with a cougar leaping from a rock face, a radial line background and a micro-engraved maple leaf as a security mark. The front is Elizabeth II from a 2003 portrait. It comes from a country that strikes its own coins at its own mint, so it is probably the easiest of the ten to sell.

The pattern: who really makes them

Czech Lion: Niue’s coin, struck in Prague.
Southern Cross: struck in Australia.
Maltese Cross and Golden Eagle: Malta’s coins, struck at two different private mints.
Barbados Trident: Barbados’s coin, struck in Arizona.
Royal Arms and Angel: struck by the Royal Mint itself.
Cougar: struck by the Royal Canadian Mint.
St. Helena is a British territory, and Specters is its own private category.

Hired-mint coins are not bad, but it changes how I think about them.

What this means for your stack

The metal is the same in all of them, so the premium is what you are really comparing. A pretty design from a tiny jurisdiction can cost more than an Eagle and be harder to sell.
Coins dealers recognize sell easiest. Royal Canadian Mint and Royal Mint coins are usually the safest.
Check mintage if you care about collector value, but know that exact figures are hard to find for many of these.
Inspect on arrival for nicks, scratches and dents.
Buy what you like. This is a hobby as much as a financial move.

Coins from smaller jurisdictions and the story coins belong in the fun slice of a stack, not the foundation. Keep your core in widely recognized sovereign bullion, and use this kind of coin to enjoy the hobby.

This is not financial advice.