20 Dollars Turtle

Palau's large-format silver issues of the late 1990s were part of a deliberate strategy by the young republic — independent only since 1994 — to generate foreign exchange through numismatic exports. The coins were never intended for domestic circulation and were marketed almost exclusively to European collector markets, particularly Germany, where demand for oversized silver issues was strongest at the time.

The turtle subject was not incidental. Palau's Exclusive Economic Zone covers roughly 600,000 square kilometers of Pacific Ocean, and sea turtle conservation had become a formal government priority by the mid-1990s, with domestic legislation predating most regional equivalents.