1000 Drams Leopard

Artsakh — the self-declared republic internationally recognized almost nowhere — issued this coin during a period when building the trappings of statehood was itself a political act. The Caucasian leopard, functionally extinct across most of the South Caucasus by the early 2000s, was documented in tiny numbers in the mountainous terrain straddling Artsakh and Azerbaijan, making it simultaneously a local wildlife symbol and a creature most residents would never see.

These issues circulated in name only; the republic had no independent monetary system, operating on Armenian drams in practice.