Anthony Nesty won Suriname's first — and, for decades, only — Olympic gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Games, touching out Matt Biondi in the 100m butterfly by a single hundredth of a second. The margin was so narrow that Biondi later said a longer fingernail would have changed the result. Nesty's victory prompted Suriname to put his face on a stamp within weeks of the finish.
This 2008 bullion issue was part of a broader series by the Centrale Bank commemorating national figures in fractional gold, struck to .999 fineness at a time when such small-denomination commemoratives were increasingly popular among Caribbean and South American central banks targeting collector markets rather than circulation.
Anthony Nesty won Suriname's first — and, for decades, only — Olympic gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Games, touching out Matt Biondi in the 100m butterfly by a single hundredth of a second. The margin was so narrow that Biondi later said a longer fingernail would have changed the result. Nesty's victory prompted Suriname to put his face on a stamp within weeks of the finish.
This 2008 bullion issue was part of a broader series by the Centrale Bank commemorating national figures in fractional gold, struck to .999 fineness at a time when such small-denomination commemoratives were increasingly popular among Caribbean and South American central banks targeting collector markets rather than circulation.