Most of what is written here comes from Peter Anthony’s book.
If you don´t already have it, I strongly suggest to get it.
Pandas are minted in 3 different mints, ShenYang Mint, Shanghai Mint and Shenzhen GuoBao Mint.
Between 1989 and 2003 there are some differences in coins struck in the mints.
Someone of them can be hard to see.
This is the first 1oz coin in the series.
255 000 were planned to be minted.
Planned mintage was 200 000 pcs.
1990 was the first year with a variation on the date.
Those variations are normally called small and large date.
also the large date has a serif that the small date is missing.
Also this year, large date has a serif.
The mintage figures between the large and small date are evenly distributed.
This year is the hardest to see any difference between the small and large dates.
This year’s large date can be hard to get hold of, as only 13 000 are estimated to have survived.
This year the small dates that are the hardest to find.
1995 there are 3 known variations.
Shanghai version with 9 leaves on the twig in the panda’s hand.
Shenyang version with only 3 leaves on the twig, and to complicate the issue there is another version from Shenyang called the Micro date., the Micro date is very rare.
NGC and PCGS have in the past also been confused with their respective labeling!
1996 was probably the year that had most speculators, mostly because the upcoming return of Hong Kong to China.
Rumors say that there still are many pandas in vaults that cost more than 100$ each.
Large date is more common but small date is more common as graded MS70 and MS69.
Small date is more common this year, the large date has a serif.
Planned mintage was 250 000.
As the gold and silver prices were low, lots of the pandas were melted by jewelers and dealers.
Large date is seen only half as often as the small date.
This year there are 3 variations again.
Shanghai small date, Shenyang large date, Shenzhen GuoBao large date with serif.
1999 serif is counted as one of the three key dates, the other 2 are 1995 micro and the 2000 mirror.
There are 2 variations this year, frosted and mirrored ring.
Mirror variation was only meant for the domestic (Chinese) market. The Mirrored version is best described as the ring around the edge of the coin on the Temple side is mirrored (ie the same background as the rest of the Temple side), however caution is required when purchasing this coin since they are very often faked, most of the ones on auction sites are indeed fakes..
Planned mintage was 500 000 pcs.
There are only 155000 estimated survivors, plus 33 000 that are D-marked.
The D-mark stand for Domestic, and these was meant for the Chinese market only.
There are 2 variations of the D-mark, Large and small D with the small date much rarer.
There are also frosted and mirror branches versions of the coin recently discovered!
Never before or after has there been a repeated design.
Planned mintage was 600 000 pcs.
This year there are 2 variations, mirrored and frosted variation.
This was only the second year that had more than 1 panda on the BU version.
Some collectors have started to see 2006 like a semi key date.
Planned mintage was 800 000 pcs.
This is the last year so far that has a mintage below 1 million.
Planned mintage was 3 000 000 pcs.
Planned mintage was 8 000 000 pcs.
This is the only year so far that has 3 pandas on the reverse.
This is the only year that does not have purity or weight on it.
The weight is still 1oz though.
Lots of buyers did get upset with this.
Weight and purity is back.
The new weight is 30grams instead of 1oz.