The Republic of Palau, the Pacific island-chain nation, has issued a new pure-silver 20 dollar coin commemorating H.P. Lovecraft. I assume it’s real currency that might buy you ⅔’s of a ginger-beer on one of their beautiful atoll beaches.
But isn’t little Palau supposed to be beneath the rising waves by now, like R’lyeh? Nope. Despite many claims heard in the media, none of the Pacific atoll islands with people on them are shrinking.
Incidentally, looking up the spelling of R’lyeh via search shows that Google doesn’t know what it is when slightly mis-spelled. Bing / DuckDuckGo (the Duck is Bing) does, suggesting Microsoft may now have a wider semantic lookup than Google Search.
Spooky-looking coin. I’m interested in the later Roman Empire, and Cook Islands have a Roman Emperors series which includes such unlikely figures as Valentinian III and Romulus Augustulus. I think these Cook Island coins have a nominal value of $5 and sell for $350 or thereabouts. I doubt that the silver value is even 10% of the price. Of course, these coins are targeted at the collector’s market. (I almost wrote numismatic, but that’s stamps.) I don’t know what kind of repute these kinds of offerings have among coin collectors. Now that there is a Cthulhu coin, I wonder how long it will be before we have a Lovecraft coin or stamp. Of course, his well-known racial prejudices may militate against his being so honored by any country. Maybe a Lovecraft coin or stamp has already happened and my radar hasn’t been good enough to notice it. I think there have been private-issue Lovecraft medals.