Just thought it worthwhile to put up a coin with a bat on it once in a while.
Today's coin is from Poland, a 2 Zloty (about 50 cents US) and part of what is called a Commemorative Series but I have no idea what they are commemorating with a bat on the coin. The coin was issued on 4/17/2010 and is composed of "Nordic gold." This is a mix of 89% copper, 5% zinc, 5% aluminum, and 1% tin. Um, did the Norwegians not know what real gold was or are the Poles just having a joke on their neighbors a short way across the Bering Sea the Danes and Swedes. Either way, there is no gold involved, other than in the name. And your Polish language lesson of the day is that Zloty mean "golden" in Polish.
But the coin needs no precious metals to be a pretty solid bat coin. The bat on the front (or is it the back?) is the Lesser Horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hipposideros). This is a pretty cool Old World bat with a pretty striking nose leaf which is clearly visible on the bat on the coin.
Today's coin is from Poland, a 2 Zloty (about 50 cents US) and part of what is called a Commemorative Series but I have no idea what they are commemorating with a bat on the coin. The coin was issued on 4/17/2010 and is composed of "Nordic gold." This is a mix of 89% copper, 5% zinc, 5% aluminum, and 1% tin. Um, did the Norwegians not know what real gold was or are the Poles just having a joke on their neighbors a short way across the Bering Sea the Danes and Swedes. Either way, there is no gold involved, other than in the name. And your Polish language lesson of the day is that Zloty mean "golden" in Polish.
But the coin needs no precious metals to be a pretty solid bat coin. The bat on the front (or is it the back?) is the Lesser Horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hipposideros). This is a pretty cool Old World bat with a pretty striking nose leaf which is clearly visible on the bat on the coin.
The bat is in a pretty normal flying pose for bat art and nicely done (although the legs/feet appear too much like arms). And, did you see them? In the cloud above the main bat is another bat, only this time it is a stencil of a bat outlined where there is a bat-shaped hole in the clouds. Pretty neat. But keep looking, and up just a tad higher is third bat. This one is half stencil and half fully raised detail. How clever is that? Oh yeah, and did you see that perfectly round bit down below the bat's right wing (left side looking at the coin)? You would think the one thing easy to spot in the night sky is the moon, but it took me a good while to see that and then figure out what it was.
Ahia! There is the date, so this is the front of the coin and the bat is on the reverse. And her on the front we have... You know, I am going to leave it up to the viewer to figure that one out. See, I believe it is supposed to be an eagle, but to me it looks quite a bit more like what birders would call a Red Jungle Fowl.
And just to head off the barrage of trouble I will get for these photos being less than my usual quality, I will note that the coin is in a "slab." This is a sealed plastic case put on after the coin was graded (MS-64 means Mint State and fairly nice but not perfect) and I must say shooting photos through that plastic is not easy.
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