The 2023 Rabbit is the fourth animal in Perth Mint's ongoing Lunar Series III, which launched in 2020 with the Mouse. Series III distinguished itself from its predecessors by adopting Ian Rank-Broadley's sixth-generation effigy of Elizabeth II — the same portrait introduced across Australian coinage in 2019 — making this issue one of the last bullion coins planned around a living monarch. Elizabeth II died in September 2022, several months before this coin entered production, rendering every 2023-dated Lunar piece a posthumous issue by circumstance rather than design.
The 2023 Rabbit is the fourth animal in Perth Mint's ongoing Lunar Series III, which launched in 2020 with the Mouse. Series III distinguished itself from its predecessors by adopting Ian Rank-Broadley's sixth-generation effigy of Elizabeth II — the same portrait introduced across Australian coinage in 2019 — making this issue one of the last bullion coins planned around a living monarch. Elizabeth II died in September 2022, several months before this coin entered production, rendering every 2023-dated Lunar piece a posthumous issue by circumstance rather than design.