2 Dollars Camera Obscura

Palau has built one of the more aggressive novelty bullion programs in the Pacific, and this piece falls squarely within it — Camera Obscura is part of a broader series celebrating optical instruments and the history of image-making. The camera obscura itself predates photography by centuries, documented in use by artists including Vermeer and Canaletto as a compositional aid, though its optical principles were described as early as the 10th century by Ibn al-Haytham in his Book of Optics.