Description
This 2015 $20 fine silver coin is part of a series by the Royal Canadian Mint showcasing the uniqueness of Canada's Great Lakes. This coin is struck in one troy ounce of 99.99% fine silver, and features a mintage of 10,000 coins. As a pure silver coin, this item is GST/HST-exempt.
The Design:
Some key features make the reverse of these coins exceptional, such as the deep negative relief (incuse) used to indicate varying depths of the lake. The space is then filled with vibrant, translucent blue enamel that shimmers on the surface of the coin the way the lake would shimmer under the white light of the Canadian sun. The lake is surrounded by a high-relief topographical map of the land around it, and further encircled by the points on a compass, with an arrow pointing due north. The face value of "20 DOLLARS" can be seen to the right of the lake, while the bottom rim of the coin reads "LAKE MICHIGAN/LAC MICHIGAN".
Lake Michigan:
Lake Michigan is the second largest of the Great Lakes by volume, and the third largest by surface area; it is also the only of the Great Lakes to be located entirely within the United States. Originally, the word "Michigan" referred to the lake itself, as it comes from the Ojibwa word mishigami, meaning "great water". The earliest known human inhabitants of the area around Lake Michigan were the Hopewell peoples, whose culture began to decline around 800 CE. In the few hundred years after that, the region became home to the Woodland peoples; by the time the first western European explorers came into the region in the early 17th century, they met the descendants of these Woodland people. The French explorer Jean Nicolet is likely the first non-aboriginal person to reach Lake Michigan, at some point in the 1630s.
