Otto von Bismarck lends his name to this coin not through any connection to the Pacific, but via the German cruiser SMS Bismarck, which passed through Micronesian and Melanesian waters during imperial Germany's late 19th-century colonial expansion. Tuvalu — formerly the Ellice Islands — was British territory throughout that period, placing it administratively apart from German Oceania, which included the Marshall Islands and parts of Samoa.
The issue belongs to Tuvalu's long-running series of commemorative dollars produced under the Ian Rank-Broadley effigy authorization, struck by the Perth Mint on contract.
Otto von Bismarck lends his name to this coin not through any connection to the Pacific, but via the German cruiser SMS Bismarck, which passed through Micronesian and Melanesian waters during imperial Germany's late 19th-century colonial expansion. Tuvalu — formerly the Ellice Islands — was British territory throughout that period, placing it administratively apart from German Oceania, which included the Marshall Islands and parts of Samoa.
The issue belongs to Tuvalu's long-running series of commemorative dollars produced under the Ian Rank-Broadley effigy authorization, struck by the Perth Mint on contract.