The "Cymric" name refers to the Welsh Celtic art tradition, and this coin was part of a broader Royal Canadian Mint initiative in the late 1990s to explore Celtic design vocabularies across a series of collector issues. The 1999 release drew on knotwork and interlace patterns associated with the ancient Britons — a deliberate nod to one strand of Canada's European heritage at a moment when the Mint was aggressively expanding its numismatic program to compete with international collector markets.
Struck for the collector market rather than circulation, survivorship in original packaging is near-universal for this type.
The "Cymric" name refers to the Welsh Celtic art tradition, and this coin was part of a broader Royal Canadian Mint initiative in the late 1990s to explore Celtic design vocabularies across a series of collector issues. The 1999 release drew on knotwork and interlace patterns associated with the ancient Britons — a deliberate nod to one strand of Canada's European heritage at a moment when the Mint was aggressively expanding its numismatic program to compete with international collector markets.
Struck for the collector market rather than circulation, survivorship in original packaging is near-universal for this type.