500 Sika Leatherback Turtle

Ghana's wildlife coin program of the early 2000s targeted the international collector market aggressively, and this piece was struck by a European contract mint rather than domestically — Ghana has never operated a mint of its own. The leatherback turtle series drew on Ghana's Atlantic coastline, where leatherbacks do nest, though by 2003 nesting populations along West Africa's shores had already collapsed to functionally marginal numbers due to decades of egg harvesting and bycatch mortality.