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Third coin in this series after Ares and Poseidon. See fourth coin: Apollo.

They said about this coin:

„Incredible Silver Coin.” Backyard Bullion on YT

Mr. Hephaestus, a big muscle man is working in the forge. This room seems to be too small for him. He is a little clumsy—according to mythology, he was “shrivelled of foot”.

Hephaestus is forging a sword. His clumsy fingers are holding the pincers of the blacksmith. Behind him we see the armour, sword and famous shield of Achilles, and by his right leg the helmet of Achilles. Behind Hephaestus’ back are the blacksmith’s tools and the thunderbolts of Zeus.

On the initial sketch the hammer strike looks different, but it seemed to unnatural to me. So I changed the hand position on the final design. See below.

The shield of Achilles was drawn as a separate element. I drew it according to the description in the Homer’s Iliad. The first circle is the sea, earth, sky, sun, moon and stars. Then there is a circle with two cities. On the one side we see a dancing wedding procession, two men quarreling over payment for a murder. On the other side of this circle: a city siege. The next circle depicts the harvest, cattle, and vine growing. Next are girls and boys dancing the Ariadne dance that Daedalus invented. The last circle is fulfilled by Oceanus—the outer sea.

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On the reverse of this coin we see one of the main scenes from Homer’s Iliad: Achilles kills Hector outside the gates of Troy.

The composition—two fighting warriors in profile—refers to the Greek pottery paintings. I even thought about red gold or copper plating of the coin with black proof decoration, just like red-figure or black-figure ancient Greek vases.

The insert: hematite is called a stone of warriors. Its name comes from the Greek: αἷμα [haima] means “blood”, and haimatites—”bloody”. It is a common mineral, iron oxide, which after powdering takes on a red color. Red ochre—natural pigment used in paintings over the world—contains hematite. In ancient Babylon, hematite was an amulet worn by warriors during wars.

They said about my Achilles:

“We always cheer up when we hear Numiartis have something new coming out, mainly because you’re almost guaranteed to get something special. With such quality releases as the Minotaur, Ares, (…) and recently, the superb Poseidon, they have a standard of output matched by few others, no doubt aided by choosing to work with some of the best in the industry like CIT and the Mint of Poland.” AgAuNews