Canada 25 cents - Elizabeth II 1966

The coin's story

This 25 cents coin in 800 thousandths silver belongs to the short series struck in 1965 and 1966, the first to bear the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II with a tiara, designed by Arnold Machin. The reverse shows the head of a caribou, a design created for the new coinage of 1937, on the accession of George VI, and still in use today, the model was sculpted by Emanuel Hahn, whose initial H appears below the neck. The 1966 date was struck at the Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa in 25,626,315 pieces. The following year, for the centenary of Confederation, the caribou temporarily gave way to the lynx drawn by Alex Colville.