50 Roubles Black Sea Aphalina

Part of Russia's early post-Soviet wildlife series, this issue appeared during a period when the rouble was collapsing in real terms — a 50-rouble face value that had meaningful purchasing power at issue was essentially worthless within months as inflation ran into the hundreds of percent annually. The bimetallic format was itself a novelty for Russian coinage at the time, borrowed from technologies already deployed in Western European circulation issues.

The Black Sea bottlenose dolphin (*Tursiops truncatus ponticus*) subspecies depicted here was already under significant conservation pressure from Soviet-era fishing and naval activity in the enclosed basin.