5 Francs Spoon

The "Spoon Money" issues from the Democratic Republic of the Congo occupy a peculiar corner of modern numismatics. The iron composition deliberately echoes the hoe and spoon-shaped currency objects — known as katanga crosses and various blade currencies — that circulated across central Africa as trade money well into the colonial period. This piece is less a coin than a self-conscious reference to that tradition, issued for the collector market rather than any meaningful domestic circulation.

KM#128 is one of several such novelty pieces the DRC authorized in the early 2000s, a period when the government was extracting hard currency through collector sales while the country's actual monetary system remained heavily dollarized following years of catastrophic hyperinflation under Mobutu.