100 Apsars New Athos Monastery

Abkhazia's status as a breakaway state — recognized by fewer than a dozen UN members, Russia chief among them — means its coinage exists in a legal grey zone that most international numismatic bodies simply decline to adjudicate. The Bank of Abkhazia issues collector pieces that circulate nowhere, backed by a currency that functions only within a territory whose sovereignty remains actively disputed by Georgia and most of the world.

New Athos Monastery was suppressed and partially destroyed during the Soviet period, its monks expelled in 1924. Restoration began only after the USSR's collapse.