Osamu Tezuka died in 1989, and by 2011 his estate had become an aggressive licensor of his image and characters across commercial products throughout Asia and the Pacific. This coin is part of that licensing apparatus — Tuvalu's mint program has long functioned as a revenue vehicle rather than a reflection of domestic monetary need, with the island's actual GDP making a $50 face value coin an abstraction.
Osamu Tezuka died in 1989, and by 2011 his estate had become an aggressive licensor of his image and characters across commercial products throughout Asia and the Pacific. This coin is part of that licensing apparatus — Tuvalu's mint program has long functioned as a revenue vehicle rather than a reflection of domestic monetary need, with the island's actual GDP making a $50 face value coin an abstraction.