The Perth Mint's opal inlay series sources its stones from South Australian fields, predominantly the Coober Pedy and Lightning Ridge regions, which together produce the overwhelming majority of the world's white and black opal respectively. Each inlaid stone is unique, meaning no two coins in this issue are strictly identical. The 2016 date places this in the final year of the Monkey in the twelve-year lunar cycle, a detail that drives significant demand from East Asian collector markets — the Perth Mint has explicitly targeted that demographic since the late 1990s.
The Perth Mint's opal inlay series sources its stones from South Australian fields, predominantly the Coober Pedy and Lightning Ridge regions, which together produce the overwhelming majority of the world's white and black opal respectively. Each inlaid stone is unique, meaning no two coins in this issue are strictly identical. The 2016 date places this in the final year of the Monkey in the twelve-year lunar cycle, a detail that drives significant demand from East Asian collector markets — the Perth Mint has explicitly targeted that demographic since the late 1990s.