50 Kip Elasmosaurus and Tylosaurus

Part of a broader wave of Laotian silver commemoratives issued through the 1990s for the collector export market, this piece had no meaningful domestic circulation — Laos in 1994 was running a parallel economy where the kip held little purchasing power against the dollar and Thai baht. The face value is essentially notional.

Elasmosaurus, the long-necked plesiosaur, was famously misassembled by Edward Drinker Cope in 1868, who placed the skull on the tail end — an error Othniel Charles Marsh gleefully publicized, deepening one of paleontology's most bitter rivalries.