50 Tenge The First Cosmonaut - Yuri Gagarin

Gagarin's connection to Kazakhstan is direct and specific: he launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on April 12, 1961, and Kazakhstan — then a Soviet republic with no independent mint — could not issue commemorative coinage in its own name until after 1991. This 2011 piece marks the fiftieth anniversary of that launch, issued by a sovereign state commemorating an event that occurred on its own soil decades before sovereignty existed.

Baikonur remains leased to Russia under an agreement running through 2050.