1/10 Crown - Elizabeth II Blue British Short Hair Cat

The Isle of Man's annual cat coinage program, running continuously since 1988, has become one of the longer-lived bullion series in British Crown dependency issues — unusual in that the reverse design changes every year, preventing the series from settling into the monotony that plagues most fractional gold programs. The 1999 issue depicts the Blue British Shorthair, a breed whose modern standardization owes largely to post-WWII reconstruction efforts after the variety was nearly bred out of existence through wartime crossings with Persians and Blues.

At 3.11g of .9999 fine gold, this fraction mirrors the standard tenth-ounce specification adopted across competing programs from Perth and the Royal Mint. Mintage figures for individual years in this series were not always formally published by the Isle of Man Treasury.