1 Apsar Lake Ritsa

Abkhazia's bimetallic plastic-centred issues occupy a peculiar corner of numismatics — the territory's independence is recognized by only a handful of states, meaning the Bank of Abkhazia operates outside mainstream international monetary frameworks entirely. These coins circulate, if at all, within a micro-economy heavily subsidized by Russia. Lake Ritsa sits in the western Caucasus at roughly 950 meters elevation, reached by a road famously built under Stalin's personal directive in the 1930s, partly to service a nearby dacha he used intermittently.