20 Dollars - Elizabeth II Incuse Silver Maple Leaf

The incuse treatment applied here inverts the standard relief convention — rather than the design rising from the field, it is recessed into it. The Royal Canadian Mint has experimented with incuse finishes intermittently since the 1990s, but the combination with rhodium plating represents a more recent production wrinkle: rhodium, one of the platinum-group metals and among the most expensive by spot price, resists tarnish and fingerprinting in ways that bare silver cannot. The plating is thin enough that it does not materially affect the silver content declaration, but thick enough to alter the coin's optical character entirely.