1988 Bermuda 10 Cents — Elizabeth II / Bermuda Lily — Copper-Nickel — VF to EF

☢️ Tucked into a pocket after a morning at the Hamilton Botanical Gardens, this ten-cent coin carried a flower that had once made the island famous — the Bermuda lily, whose blooms were shipped by the millions to churches across North America every Easter until a virus destroyed nearly the entire commercial crop.
 
This 1988 Bermuda 10 cents features two Bermuda lily blooms on a single stem — one trumpet fully open, the other still unfurling — rendered with the precision of a botanical illustration. The Bermuda lily is a variety of Lilium longiflorum, the Easter lily, and for much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Bermuda was the world's primary source of Easter lily bulbs. The industry collapsed when a viral disease swept through the plantations, and commercial production eventually moved to the Pacific Northwest. The flower survived in Bermuda's gardens and on its coins.
 
The obverse carries Raphael Maklouf's crowned portrait of Elizabeth II. The coin is smaller than the five-cent angelfish — 17.9 millimeters against 21.2 — which means Bermuda is one of those systems where the ten-cent piece is physically smaller than the five. The denomination is carried by value, not by size, and the lily fills its compact circle with an elegance that benefits from the constraint.
 
💡 Everyday Life at the Time
 In 1988, ten Bermudian cents — equal to ten US cents at the fixed peg — bought a postcard stamp or contributed toward a ferry ride across Hamilton Harbour. Bermuda's economy was anchored by tourism and the offshore insurance industry, and the island's gardens and parks were a significant draw for visitors. The lily that had once been a cash crop was now ornamental, cultivated in private gardens and public spaces but no longer exported in commercial quantities.
 
📜 Historical Context
 The Bermuda lily industry began in the 1850s when a local florist recognized that the island's mild climate allowed lilies to bloom months earlier than they could in North America. By the 1890s, Bermuda was exporting millions of bulbs annually, and the lily had become so associated with the island that Bermuda was widely known as the Lily Capital. The industry's collapse in the early twentieth century — caused by a succession of viral diseases that devastated the bulb stock — was an economic blow that the island eventually absorbed by pivoting to tourism and financial services.
 
The decision to place the lily on the ten-cent coin in 1970 was a memorial as much as a celebration. The flower that had defined Bermuda's agricultural identity for half a century was preserved in copper-nickel after it could no longer be preserved in soil. The design has survived across four portrait changes and continues on the denomination today, and the two blooms on the coin — one fully open, one still emerging — suggest a plant that is still growing rather than one that has been frozen.
 
🧾 Coin Details
 Country: Bermuda
Denomination: 10 Cents
Year: 1988
Government: British Overseas Territory (Elizabeth II)
Composition: Copper-nickel
Weight: 2.45 g
Diameter: 17.9 mm
Thickness: 1.34 mm
Mintage: Circulation strike, Royal Mint
Condition: VF to EF — the lily petals retain clear vein detail on both blooms; the stem and leaves show good definition; some surface spotting consistent with copper-nickel exposed to humid Atlantic air; Maklouf portrait fully legible with crown detail intact
 
This is a small coin — smaller than the five-cent angelfish from the same year, which is unusual and slightly disorienting the first time you hold both together. The copper-nickel is cool and bright, and the lily fills the reverse with a botanical precision that makes you want to look closer. The petal veins are individually rendered, the stamen is visible at the center of the open bloom, and the second flower still in trumpet form creates a visual asymmetry that gives the design life. It feels like holding a page torn from a field guide and pressed into metal.
 
⭐ Why This Coin Is a Great Collectible
 • Features the Bermuda lily — the Easter lily variety that once made Bermuda the Lily Capital of the World before viral disease destroyed the commercial crop
• Botanical design with two blooms at different stages — one open, one still emerging — rendered with field-guide precision
• Smaller than the five-cent coin from the same country — an unusual denomination-size inversion that surprises first-time holders
• The flower survived on the coin after it could no longer survive commercially on the island — copper-nickel as preservation medium
• Pairs with the queen angelfish five cents from the same year — reef and garden on two denominations from the same island
• Raphael Maklouf portrait of Elizabeth II on a British Overseas Territory settled since 1612
 
💡 Collector Tip
 Once you hold the angelfish five cents and the lily ten cents from Bermuda side by side, you are holding the reef and the garden on two coins from the same island — one creature from the water, one flower from the land, and the same queen on both obverses. The kind of collector who pairs denominations from a single country is the kind who begins to see a national coinage as a curated portrait of place, each denomination carrying a different aspect of the same island's identity.
 
You will receive the exact coin shown in these photographs. All coins are authentic and unaltered — we don't enhance patina or touch up surfaces. Grades are conservative; circulated pieces show honest wear from actual use, not damage or mishandling. Carefully packaged. Ships promptly with tracking.
 
The virus killed the crop. The coin kept the flower. Copper-nickel does not catch disease.