500 Tögrög Thomas Alva Edison

Mongolia issued a run of bimetallic silver commemoratives in the late 1990s honoring figures with no particular connection to the country — Edison among them. The gold-plated center was a production technique gaining traction at several world mint facilities during this period, allowing issuers to simulate a bimetallic appearance without base-metal cores. These pieces were sold directly into the collector market and never circulated.

Edison died in 1931, and by 1999 his patents on electric light distribution had long since shaped the infrastructure of Ulaanbaatar itself.