Finally a very difficult spot is filled! Turkmenistan has been a big challenge. A design I liked popped up on eBay earlier this month and I pulled the (expensive) trigger. The coin celebrates the 20th Anniversary of Turkmenistan's independence with Oguz Khan riding a horse on the obverse (the letters TMB below stand for "Türkmenistanyň Merkezi Banky" - their central bank) and the State Emblem on the reverse. At just 300 examples, this becomes the lowest mintage coin in my set. The Legend of Oguz Khan is an interesting read, and you can find it summarized in the Wikipedia link below: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oghuz_Khagan Country Turkmenistan Denomination 20 Manat Year 2011 Subject 20th Anniversary of Independence Composition Silver Weight (gr) 8.11 Diameter (mm) 22 Mintage 300 Mint Royal Mint (UK)
Nice coin! Thanks for posting it. Turkmenistan is a strange place. Very much a closed dictatorship and hard for Westerners to visit. Below is a link to video by a frequent flyer who managed to get a transfer in the Ashgabat (the capitol) airport. He was not allowed outside the airport. As the video shows, Turkmenistan Airline is as strange as the country. Imagine a jet taking off with folks still standing and milling about! Cal
I used to watch this guy, Drew Binsky, who travelled to every country and he had a video about Turkmenistan too.
This post piqued my curiosity, so I found a page on Numista showing the coins Turkmenistan has issued over the years. The ones from the personality cult are particularly interesting: Note that “Ruhnama” is a book of Turkmenbashi’s sayings that everyone was required to study and memorize, sort of like Mao’s little red book. There weren’t nearly as many featuring Berdymukhamedov, although every newspaper was required to have his picture on the front page every day. I suppose we could say he had the “personality cult lite”. Instead of a grand title like “Turkmenbashi” (father of the Turkmen) he took the modest title of “Arkadag” (the great protector).
