Now THIS is a bat coin!  Canada started its "Nocturnal by Nature" series in 2016 (owl) and continues it this year with the little brown bat.  These coins are beautiful, clever and extremely well done.

​The little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) is the focus animal, but designer Calder Moore (initials under the bat's wing) outdid himself.  First, and most striking, the coin is partially plated (including the rim) in Rhodium.  And a little about that...

​Rhodium is a rare precious metal (runs about $1,500 per ounce so just more than gold) that comes in at number 45 on the periodic table (symbol Rh).  It has some cool properties like being completely impervious to nitric acid, but few uses.  It's main use is as a noxious chemical "cleaner" in catalytic converters in vehicles, which is why those things are so expensive to replace and a target for thieves.

​But back to the coin.  It is a big coin at 38mm diameter, and weighs 31.39g so pretty much a standard 1 oz round size.  Made of pure silver it is a matte proof so has the ultra-smooth fields and frosty cameo raised areas (primarily the bat and the queen).  And as the mint notes, tilting the coin shows different levels of matte and glossy shine depending on how it is held.  See the video from the mint at the end of this post.

So, the standard bits on the obverse:  CANADA, 20 DOLLARS, and the date 2017.  And without tons of distractions, there is just the bat and the moon.  The moon is not plated in rhodium, and so appears as if shining brightly in the night sky, a very cool effect.  And it has such detail that it looks like a 3D NASA map of the moon's surface.  Fantastic detail.

​Now the bat itself, seen here flying in a Rhodium night with a full silver moon behind it.  Noted in the Certificate of Authenticity as a Little Brown Bat, I would almost tend to agree.  The anatomy is perfect for a bat, right down to minute details like the gap between the upper canine teeth and the tragus visible inside the ear.  And really, it is an honest bat with such things as the bone structure perfect and the shape of the tail membrane correct with the calcar (little cartilage bits that come off from the ankles and run along the edge of the tail membrane) creating the proper flight shape.  One of the best bats on coins, no doubt.

​My only grief here is that the face and ears do not exactly look like a little brown bat, and maybe that the body is too large as that would be a pretty darn fat little brown.  Anyway, to be specific about the face and ears, I would suggest that they were actually taken from a silver-haired bat (a very common bat in Canada).  The ears are too blunt and rounded, the tragus is much too blunt and the face looks flatter.  Now understand that these bats are in the same Family, and are look quite similar in black and white, but I just see a silver-haired bat when I look at it not a little brown.  Of note, however, the silver-haired bat has more fur on the wing and membrane areas than depicted here, so it doesn't seem like a wrong-bat fail, just an odd face on a little brown.

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The reverse is the usual fare, with Queen Elizabeth looking particularly good (she is currently 91 years old) in this Susanna Blunt design and the text ELIZABETH II AND D.G.REGINA  around the rim.  

​The Royal Canadian Mint produces a large number of interesting coins, and does a very good job with them, with this one being a standout.  And they did a spiffy little YouTube video of this one to show how the looks vary depending on lighting angle, so I leave you staring and the thing going round and round...

This is only a bat coin in the broadest sense.  There are untold numbers of coins and coin-like things with the Chinese blessings symbols on them, and the bat is one of the more prominent symbols.  Often the only symbol, with a ring of five bats making up the design.  But I am just firing up this round of bat coins and this one was next on the list.

​While this is a coin, with a denomination of five Canadian dollars, it was minted more as silver bullion.  I can find no mintage figure so really don't know how many were made, but it sold for just a little over the value of the silver and most major dealers sold out of them fairly quickly.  It has a diameter of 38mm, like most silver rounds and weighs in at 1 ounce.  Other similar coins to this one were also minted in other years and also in gold, but it is not enough of a bat coin for me to collect every variety available.

​The obverse is the standard issue current portrait of Queen Elizabeth II with just a few words around the rim noting just that along with the date and the denomination.  Of note, these come in a tightly sealed plastic wrap, so the photos have weird glare around the edges.  This also created a problem for the coins themselves as many were issued with "milk spots" on them likely from impurities inside the casing when it was sealed.  These spotty ones are not in demand so look carefully at any of these if you are thinking to buy one.

The reverse of the coin has the four animals and one symbol associated with the five blessings.  The bat is up top and is, as usual for such things, highly stylized and actually quite dragon-like up close.  Very hard to get an acceptable photo through that plastic sheeting of the details, but...

The other animals are the deer, cranes and magpie along with the Chinese symbol for good fortune.

The other animals are pretty close to reality, so interesting that they still chose to use the stylized bat instead of a real example.  Other than that it has the country name on it and notes that it is 1 ounce.  0.9999 fine silver is written both in English and in Latin for all those folks who don't get to read enough Latin in their daily lives.

​Stay tuned!  Canada really rocked the house with its latest bat coin, and that one will be up next...

It is time for another round of bat coins.  To start off this set, a fine coin from Austria.  This is a copper 5 Euro coin commemorating the Johann Struass II Operetta "Die Fledermaus" or in English, The Bat.  

​The coin is just a shade smaller than a US half dollar, coming in at 28.5mm in diameter and 8.9g in weight.  And it is nonagonal in shape (your word of the day!  meaning 9-sided), which is certainly an odd shape.  But it looks pretty cool.  It came in two versions, one copper and one silver (I will get to the silver one at a later date) neither of which were for general circulation.  Even so, 200,000 were minted so not exactly a rare coin.

​The obverse is a depiction of a lady drinking champaign at a ball (the operetta is not about a bat, but about a ball in Vienna, Austria in the 1800's).  In the upper left are the words "DIE FLEDERMAUS" (The Bat in Austrian/German) and among the cluster of champaign bubbles is a flying bat.  It is a fine little bat of some kind, looking very much like an insectivorous bat from Europe.  The nose is a bit cat-like instead of bat-like, but that is such a small detail!

The reverse, while spiffy enough, is standard coinage fare.  The shield of the 9 Federal Austrian States surrounds the denomination and around the rim are the words "REPUBLIK OSTERREICH" AND "EURO".

And finally, the edge of the coin also got a treatment.  The flat sections have reeding while the bits near the bends do not.  So overall a lot of interesting geometry and details but not too much about bats going on.

Turtles are mostly gone from northern Virginia now (burrowed down in the mud), but as long as there is open water it seems there are a few around.

Horsetails are a type of vascular plant that actually reproduces using spores instead of seeds.  Kinda unusual, but these things are relics from an older time, and are known back through the fossil record for over 100 million years.  Impressive!

Interesting sculpture at meadowlark Gardens.