5 oz Black Flag Silver Coin

The 5 oz Black Flag Silver Coin

The Black Flag series puts famous pirate flagships on legal tender coins: struck by the Perth Mint, denominated in Tuvaluan dollars, and distributed exclusively through APMEX. The 5 oz silver version is the scarcest silver format in the programme, capped at just 500 pieces per design against 15,000 for the 1 oz coins, and it accompanied each annual release from the 2019 launch through 2023.

Each coin contains five troy ounces of .9999 fine silver, the highest purity standard in the market, on a 60.6 mm flan that gives the maritime artwork room the 1 oz coins cannot. The designs focus on the ships rather than pirate portraits: Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge opened the series in 2019, followed by Black Bart's Royal Fortune, Ching Shih's Red Flag Fleet, William Moody's Rising Sun, and Henry Every's The Fancy.

This is a collector product rather than a stacking vehicle. Generic 5 oz silver bars deliver the same weight at a fraction of the premium, and even standard sovereign coins undercut limited issues like this one. What the 5 oz Black Flag offers is Perth Mint production quality, sovereign legal tender backing, a 500-piece mintage, and membership in a series whose early issues have seen secondary-market premiums rise, particularly in the gold and 5 oz formats. APMEX's exclusive distribution also means availability outside the US is thinner than for other Perth Mint products.

5 oz Black Flag Silver Specifications

The obverse carries the reigning British monarch with TUVALU, the face value, and the year: Queen Elizabeth II on the 2019-2022 issues, King Charles III from 2023. The reverse features that year's pirate ship under full sail with the pirate's name, the ship's name, and the BLACK FLAG series title. The coins bear the Perth Mint's P mint mark, and the mint itself is a government-owned, LBMA-accredited facility with over 125 years of history.

The series has no proprietary anti-counterfeiting technology (Perth Mint's Veriscan is not applied to all series), but .9999 purity is verifiable by standard testing, and the wider Black Flag range spans 1 oz silver, 1 oz gold (mintage 100-200), and a 1,500-mintage antiqued 1 oz silver version added from 2022, whose chemically aged finish suits the pirate theme.

Black Flag Silver Tax Treatment by Country

These are legal tender silver coins of .9999 fineness, which clears every purity threshold that matters, though Tuvaluan legal tender status carries no special privileges in most buyers' home countries.

• UK: 20% VAT on new silver. The coins are not UK legal tender, so there is no CGT exemption and gains above the £3,000 annual allowance are taxable; a silver Britannia pays the same VAT but escapes CGT.
• US: No federal sales tax; most states exempt bullion, some with thresholds a 5 oz silver coin may or may not clear depending on price. The .9999 purity from a sovereign mint meets IRS requirements for IRA eligibility. Long-term gains are taxed at the collectibles rate of up to 28%.
• Canada: 0% GST/HST at the 99.9% purity threshold, though coins valued chiefly for numismatic worth may not qualify.
• Australia: GST-free as a legal tender precious metal coin; standard CGT treatment applies, with the 50% discount for individuals holding longer than 12 months.
• New Zealand: fine silver at 99.9%+ purity is GST-exempt.
• Singapore: the silver coin GST exemption requires 99.9%+ purity and inclusion on the MAS-approved list; confirm classification with the dealer.
• Hong Kong: no sales tax, no duties, no capital gains tax.

Six Pirates and Their Flagships Since 2019

The series launched in 2019 with Edward Teach, Blackbeard, and the Queen Anne's Revenge, the captured French slave ship from which he terrorised the American colonies between 1716 and 1718, depicted with its gun ports bristling. Bartholomew Roberts followed in 2020 with the Royal Fortune, the fourth of his ships to carry that name; Black Bart captured over 400 vessels, making him one of the most successful pirates in history.

The 2021 issue is the series' most distinctive: Ching Shih and her Red Flag Fleet of more than 1,800 junks crewed by 60,000 to 80,000 pirates, the largest pirate armada ever assembled. She is one of the few female historical figures on any bullion series and the only pirate known to have negotiated amnesty with the Chinese government, retiring peacefully to run a gambling house. William Moody's 36-gun Rising Sun (2022) is shown sailing away from a burning ship, a nod to his reputation for looting and burning, and Henry Every's The Fancy (2023) commemorates the mutinied Royal Navy vessel from which Every seized a Mughal treasure fleet worth an estimated £600,000 in 1695. Every, sometimes called the King of Pirates, triggered one of the first worldwide manhunts and was never caught. The 2024 release, Calico Jack Rackham's Kingston, continued the 1 oz formats without a 5 oz issue.

The Tuvalu arrangement behind the series is standard industry practice: the Pacific nation of around 11,000 people licenses its currency to the Perth Mint for bullion programmes, earning royalties without bearing production costs, much as Niue and the Cook Islands do.

Black Flag vs Kangaroo, Privateer, and Generic Pirate Rounds

Against the Perth Mint's own Kangaroo and Kookaburra lines, the Black Flag trades liquidity for scarcity. The mainline series offer open or high mintages, lower premiums, and the deepest resale markets of any Perth products; the Black Flag runs deliberately limited mintages (500 for this 5 oz format) and higher per-ounce premiums in exchange for stronger collector appeal. Pure bullion buyers should take the silver Kangaroo; set builders take the pirates.

Against the Privateer series (Elemetal, 2015-2017), the closest thematic ancestor, the comparison favours Black Flag on credentials. The Privateer was a 2 oz ultra-high relief private-mint round series that became a collector favourite, but it carried no legal tender status or sovereign backing; Black Flag has both, plus Perth Mint production quality.

Against generic pirate rounds from private mints, which trade near spot, the gap is the entire premium: the Black Flag's pricing rests on Perth Mint quality, the 500-piece cap, and the annual collectible format. The East India Company has also issued pirate-themed coins for Saint Helena, but Perth Mint brand recognition gives Black Flag the edge in the market. Within the series itself, the 5 oz format is the scarcity pick among silver options: one thirtieth the mintage of the 1 oz coins, on a flan twice the diameter.