25 Kopecks

Transnistria's coinage program, launched in 2000, was among the more unusual monetary experiments of the post-Soviet period — a self-declared republic unrecognized by any UN member state issuing physical coins for a population of roughly half a million. The Transnistrian Republican Bank pushed forward regardless, contracting production abroad since the territory had no mint of its own.

The 2002 date places this piece in the second year of the aluminum bronze series, before the 2005 introduction of the plastic composite coins that drew international curiosity for entirely different reasons.