10 Roubles Death of Pope John Paul II

Arktikugol Trust — the Soviet-era coal mining conglomerate that retained administrative control over the Russian settlements on Svalbard — issued this piece as one of several celebrity and commemorative tokens produced in the early 2000s, when the Trust was generating revenue through novelty coinage rather than coal. These issues have no legal tender status in Norway or Russia and circulated, loosely speaking, only within the company settlements of Barentsburg and Pyramiden.

John Paul II died on April 2, 2005. A Russian state mining trust on Norwegian-administered Arctic territory issuing a commemorative for a Polish-born Catholic pope is as improbable a numismatic pairing as the 20th century produced.