50 000 Drams Monte Melkonian

Monte Melkonian was a California-born Armenian-American commander who became one of the most effective military leaders of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, killed by a grenade in June 1993 before the ceasefire he helped make possible. Artsakh — internationally unrecognized and operating with no formal monetary infrastructure — issued this coin as a declaration of political identity as much as anything else. The KM#2a designation distinguishes this gold-plated silver variant from the pure gold KM#2, both struck to the same massive 155.5g specification by a state that had never previously issued coinage.