1500 Francs CFA Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin

This piece belongs to a wave of small-format gold issues produced for the Republic of the Congo in the mid-2000s, largely marketed to European collector markets with no meaningful domestic circulation. Zeppelin himself died in 1917, having seen his airships transform from military curiosities into objects of national pride for Imperial Germany — and, briefly, instruments of the first strategic bombing campaign in history, with raids on London beginning in 1915.