100 Roubles Year of the Rat

Transnistria — the narrow sliver of territory between the Dniester River and the Ukrainian border that declared independence from Moldova in 1990 — has never received international recognition, yet its Republican Bank has issued a steady stream of collector coinage since the mid-1990s. This piece belongs to a Chinese lunar series produced for the export collector market, a revenue strategy common among unrecognized or micro-states with no meaningful numismatic domestic demand. The coins circulate nowhere and are legal tender in a country most governments decline to acknowledge exists.