500 Francs The Night Watch

Cameroon's commemorative output in recent decades has been dominated by a handful of European distributors — most notably the Pobjoy Mint and various Dutch and Belgian intermediaries — issuing coins that have little to do with Cameroonian monetary history and everything to do with the global collector market for high-concept silver rounds dressed in national authority. This piece follows that pattern precisely.

Rembrandt completed the painting now universally known as The Night Watch in 1642, the same year his wife Saskia died. Its original home was the Amsterdam civic guard headquarters; it was later transferred to the Rijksmuseum, where it was slashed by a knife-wielding visitor in 1975 and acid-attacked in 1990.