5 Dollars - Elizabeth II 4th Portrait - 1626 A New Map of the World: Western Hemisphere - Silver Domed

This piece belongs to a series of domed silver dollars issued by the Royal Australian Mint referencing early cartographic history. The 1626 map in question is attributed to John Speed, whose A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World was among the first atlases compiled by an English cartographer — Speed himself had no surveying background and assembled the work largely from Dutch and Flemish sources, a common and accepted practice of the period.

The domed format, achieved through a secondary pressing process, physically echoes the curvature of a globe — a deliberate technical choice rather than novelty for its own sake.