500 Tögrög Leonardo Da Vinci

Mongolia issued a series of bimetallic commemoratives in the late 1990s honoring figures with no geographic or historical connection to the country — a practice common among smaller mints seeking hard currency from the international collector market rather than domestic circulation. Da Vinci was a reliable seller. KM#181a specifically denotes the silver-ring variant, distinguished from the standard copper-nickel version (KM#181) struck the same year.