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20 Dollars - Elizabeth II The Birth of Venus
| Issuer | Cook Islands |
|---|---|
| Year | 2008 |
| Type | Non-circulating coin |
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|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Full-color reproduction of Sandro Botticelli's celebrated Renaissance painting 'The Birth of Venus' (c. 1484–1486), applied by colorization technique to the central field of the coin. The scene depicts the goddess Venus emerging from the sea standing upon a giant scallop shell, flanked on the left by the wind gods Zephyr and Aura, and on the right by a Hora or Grace extending a floral cloak. Above and below the painted panel, decorative borders incorporating stylized gem-cut rectangular insets frame the artwork. An embossed artist's palette and paintbrush motif, together with architectural elements, appear at the top of the field. The legend 'MASTERPIECES OF ART' arcs along the upper rim, while 'SANDRO BOTTICELLI' and the date '2008' are inscribed along the lower rim. |
| Reverse script | Latin |
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| Additional information |
Cook Islands has issued commemorative silver in extraordinary volume since the 1970s, and by 2008 the program had expanded well beyond any pretense of domestic monetary relevance — the islands' GDP at the time was under $200 million USD, making a 93-gram silver coin a purely philatelic product from inception. This piece belongs to a wave of art-themed issues that flooded the collector market in the late 2000s, largely distributed through European dealers and Franklin Mint-adjacent fulfillment networks rather than through any numismatic channel connected to the Pacific.
KM#639 is catalogued but thinly documented in terms of mintage figures.