Royal Canadian Mint redesigning coins to feature King Charles

Canada’s coins are getting a makeover.

On Saturday, the Government of Canada ordered the Royal Canadian Mint to redesign the country’s coins to replace Queen Elizabeth II’s portrait with King Charles III’s portrait.

“The Government of Canada tasked the Royal Canadian Mint with creating a portrait of His Majesty King Charles III that is destined for all Canadian coins,” said Alex Reeves, senior manager of public affairs with the Royal Canadian Mint, in an interview on Wednesday.

“That is circulation coins, numismatic coins, which are collector coins, and bullion coins, which are gold silver, and platinum coins made for investment purposes.”

To create the effigy of the king, the Royal Canadian Mint is undergoing a complex process.

On Monday, the Crown corporation reached out to more than 350 Canadian artists, as well as its engravers, about the redesign. Those who are interested will need to submit a portfolio of portrait work to pre-qualify.

The shortlisted artists will be given a brief on the specifications of creating the king’s portrait.

“[The portrait] has to be a profile, not a head-on portrait. It has to face left, things like that,” Reeves said, adding that with every change in monarch, the direction the portrait is facing switches.

From there, an internal review panel will review the submissions and recommend a final design to the Government of Canada and Buckingham Palace, who will give final approval.

Once the design is approved, the Mint begins its engraving and tooling processes.

“We have to work on a lot of tooling for every denomination of Canadian circulation coin, from five cents to $2,” Reeves said.

“There’s an engraving process that needs to take place to create the image in full relief that has to be transferred to dies.”

Reeves explained the dies are the cylindrical objects that are used to strike a metal blank to create the finished coin.

“Imagine all the denominations that we have and multiply that considerably to have sufficient dies to produce those coins at high volumes. That will take a few more months after we have a finished design,” he said.

The Royal Canadian Mint expects to share the new effigy design in the fall; however, it’s too early to say when Canadians will have these coins in their wallets.

All coins currently in circulation with Queen Elizabeth’s portrait remain a legal tender.