7 500 000 Lira Iznik Ceramics

Issued at the height of Turkey's catastrophic 2001 financial crisis — the worst in the country's modern history — this coin appeared as the lira was collapsing so badly that the government would within two years redenominate the entire currency, lopping six zeros to create the New Turkish Lira in 2005. A face value of 7,500,000 lira on a silver coin is less an absurdity than a straightforward artifact of that collapse.

Iznik ware, produced in the northwestern Anatolian town from the 15th through 17th centuries, supplied tilework for the great Ottoman imperial mosques of Istanbul and was heavily patronized by the sultans' court workshops.