It seems that to commemorate their flagship icon’s 35th birthday, Sanrio has teamed up with the British Royal Mint to create a number of silver and gold coins, each more expensive than the last. The collection consists of a series of proof quality coins in Sterling silver or fine gold, each with their own British-themed Hello Kitty display case and have a maximum mintage between 1000 and 3000 coins.

As you might expect, these are truly prohibitively expensive. To sum up:

• Three-Coin Silver Proof Set: £230 – Three 28.28g coins in Sterling silver, 3000 coin mintage.
• 65mm Silver Proof Coin: £280 - A 65mm, 155.51g Sterling silver coin with a face value of $10 and a mintage of 1500 coins.
• Small Gold Proof Shield Coin: £440 – A small, 22.05mm coin with 7.98g of 22 carat gold, a face value of $25 and a mintage of 1000 coins.
• Gold Proof Big Ben Coin: £920 – 15.61g of .999 fine gold in a 26.50mm coin, at a face value of 50$, again with a 1000 coin mintage.

To those hard-core fans crazy or wealthy enough to actually afford these, note that pricing is subject to possible variations in bullion price and doesn’t include shipping.

Supposedly, they have been available in Japan sometime now, and are now available for purchase internationally through the Royal Mint. High resolution images thanks to Harro Kitty, more details and pictures can be found on the website of the Royal Mint. While I can’t deny that they look awesome, I’d advise those looking to invest in precious metals to look for regular bullion coins instead.