Catalog
10 000 Dobras Sea Turtle
| Issuer | Banco Central de São Tomé e Príncipe |
|---|---|
| Year | 1992 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Shape | Round |
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| Reverse description | A finely detailed sea turtle is depicted in left profile, rendered in high relief against a naturalistic underwater scene featuring coral growths at right, seagrass at lower left, and gentle wave forms along the lower field. Three tropical fish are depicted in the upper field above the turtle. The circumferential legend TARTARUGA DO MAR - S. TOMÉ E PRÍNCIPE arcs around the upper border, while the denomination 10.000 DOBRAS, flanked by two raised dots, curves along the lower border against the mirror-polished proof field. |
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| Mintage | 1992 - Proof - 500 |
| Additional information |
São Tomé e Príncipe's 1992 gold issues were part of a broader wave of collector-targeted emissions from small island nations in the early 1990s, produced almost entirely for export sale rather than domestic circulation. The archipelago's central bank had limited hard currency reserves, and these programs were effectively revenue instruments — the coins were struck under contract and sold to international distributors with little expectation they would ever reach São Tomean hands.
KM#51 was struck to a .900 fineness matching the historic Latin Monetary Union standard, a specification chosen for its familiarity to European collector markets rather than any local tradition.