500 Kip Panthera Tigris

Laos has no wild tiger population. The species was declared functionally extinct in the country sometime in the early 2010s, making this issue an odd commemoration of an animal the nation had already lost. It belongs to a broader wave of Lao silver wildlife coins produced almost entirely for the collector export market — legal tender in name, never intended to circulate, and sold primarily through European and Asian bullion dealers.