1 oz 125th Anniversary Silver Coin

The Perth Mint's 125th Anniversary 1 oz Silver Coin

This is a one-time commemorative, not an ongoing series: a 2024-only issue marking 125 years since the Perth Mint opened on 20 June 1899. It is struck from 1 oz of .9999 fine silver, four nines rather than the .999 most silver bullion uses, matching the mint's standard for its premium silver coins. Every coin carries the unique P125 mintmark, a one-year-only mark that will never appear on another Perth Mint product.

The reverse, by Jennifer McKenna, gathers a kangaroo, kookaburra, and koala among golden wattle, Australia's national floral emblem. The choice is a deliberate piece of self-reference: those three animals front the mint's most iconic bullion programmes, the Kangaroo, the Kookaburra, and the Koala. The obverse carries Dan Thorne's effigy of King Charles III, the new standard for Australian coinage, making this a dual-transition piece combining a new monarch with a milestone anniversary.

At 150,000 coins, the silver bullion mintage is the largest of the three metals (gold is capped at 25,000 and platinum at just 5,000), so the silver version trades closest to ordinary bullion and is the least likely to develop a significant numismatic premium. What it offers is a .9999 fine ounce from a government-owned, LBMA-accredited mint with a design and mintmark that exist for one year only.

125th Anniversary Silver Coin Specifications

The reverse includes a micro-laser engraved letter detectable only under magnification, the Perth Mint's standard bullion authentication feature, alongside the P125 mintmark, which doubles as an anti-counterfeiting detail since it is unique to this issue. Each coin ships in a protective acrylic capsule. The mint also produced collector variants outside the bullion run: a 1 oz silver proof (7,500 mintage), a 2 oz gilded silver proof with selective 24-carat gilding, and a three-coin silver typeset collection, plus gold and platinum bullion versions of the same design. Those carry separate mintages and pricing; the table above describes the standard 1 oz silver bullion coin.

Tax Treatment of the 125th Anniversary Silver Coin

Silver does not enjoy the broad exemptions gold gets, but the coin's .9999 purity and Australian legal tender status qualify it as investment silver wherever such a category exists.

• Australia: GST-free as an investment-grade legal tender silver coin (99.9%+ purity).
• UK: 20% VAT on purchase. It is Australian, not UK, legal tender, so there is no CGT exemption on sale; that benefit is reserved for coins like the Silver Britannia.
• US: No federal sales tax, with most states exempting bullion coins and a minority taxing them or applying thresholds. The coin is IRA eligible, since .9999 silver clears the IRS 99.9% fineness requirement. Long-term gains outside an IRA are taxed at the collectibles rate of up to 28%.
• Canada: GST/HST exempt as silver refined beyond the 99.9% federal threshold.
• New Zealand: GST-exempt at 99.9%+ silver purity.
• Singapore: 0% GST as a qualifying Investment Precious Metal, with no capital gains tax.
• Hong Kong: no sales tax, duties, or capital gains tax.
• EU: full standard VAT at national rates on new silver coins; only the gold version of this commemorative escapes VAT under the Investment Gold Directive.

From Gold Rush Branch Mint to 125-Year Milestone

The Perth Mint opened on 20 June 1899 as the third Australian branch of Britain's Royal Mint, after Sydney (1855) and Melbourne (1872), built to process gold pouring out of the Kalgoorlie-Coolgardie rush that began with the major discoveries of 1892 and 1893. Between 1899 and 1931 it struck more than 106 million gold sovereigns and nearly 735,000 half-sovereigns for the British Empire. It stayed under British jurisdiction until 1 July 1970, when ownership passed to the Government of Western Australia, and it operates today as Gold Corporation, wholly state-owned, with an LBMA-accredited refinery that has processed over 15,000 tonnes of gold in its history, more than all the gold in Fort Knox.

The anniversary carries extra weight because Perth is the only Australian colonial branch of the Royal Mint still operating; Sydney closed in 1926 and Melbourne in 1967, so the 125th anniversary is a milestone for Australian minting as a whole. The original 1899 melting house still stands inside the heritage-listed East Perth building. The commemorative programme spanned .9999 gold, .9999 silver, and .9995 platinum bullion coins plus proof variants, all carrying the P125 mark and the 1899-2024 scroll, and all debuting Dan Thorne's Charles III effigy on a Perth Mint anniversary coin.

125th Anniversary Silver vs Perth Mint's Regular Bullion

The natural alternatives are the mint's own annual coins. The 1 oz Silver Kangaroo is the open-mintage workhorse: cheaper, more widely stocked, and easier to resell. Against it, the 125th Anniversary offers a capped 150,000 mintage and a one-off design, but at silver's commemorative price point the practical difference is modest; 150,000 is a generous cap, and the research consensus is that the silver version is the least likely of the three metals to develop numismatic value. The gold (25,000) and platinum (5,000) versions are where the scarcity story is strongest.

The Perth Mint Lunar series makes a different offer: designs that rotate annually through a 12-year zodiac cycle with a dedicated collector base, versus the Anniversary coin's single frozen design. Completists of Perth Mint history are the Anniversary coin's natural audience. Outside Australia, the concept resembles the Royal Mint's own limited multi-metal milestone commemoratives, institutional branding in coin form.

As straight silver exposure, a standard 1 oz silver coin from any major sovereign mint does the same job for less. This coin is for buyers who want the P125 mark and the story attached to it.