50 Cents - Charles III Chernobyl

The Solomon Islands has become one of the more prolific issuers of themed numismatic pieces under licensing arrangements that have little connection to the nation itself. This piece commemorates the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the reactor-four explosion at the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine that released approximately 400 times more radiation than the Hiroshima bomb and forced the permanent evacuation of Pripyat's nearly 50,000 residents.

Gold-plated iron is an unusual substrate choice — iron corrodes under the plating if the surface is compromised, making long-term preservation dependent entirely on storage conditions.