500 Manat Caspian Snowcock

Issued as part of Turkmenistan's first wildlife conservation series, released just five years after independence from the Soviet Union. The Caspian snowcock (Tetraogallus caspius) inhabits the high-altitude rocky slopes of the Kopet Dag range along Turkmenistan's southern border with Iran — terrain so inhospitable that the bird itself is rarely encountered by collectors in any form, numismatic or otherwise.

The series was struck at a foreign mint, as Turkmenistan had no domestic minting facility capable of producing commemorative silver at this specification in the mid-1990s.