Motorcycle Mania

By Dan Lewis | Tue, 3 Apr 2007

Just in from Europe are motorcycle shaped legal tender One Dollar coins, the latest release from the Federal Republic of Somalia, the country that brought us last year?s guitar shaped coins.  

The Somali Republic is a country in turmoil, located on the Horn of Africa in the easternmost part of the continent.  One of the poorest nations on Earth, it stretches from the Equator to the Red Sea and has a land mass of 246,000 square miles. The capital of the republic is Mogadishu and the vast majority of its inhabitants are nomadic or semi-nomadic Somali.  No effective central government has existed since the early 1990s, which is where the Federal Republic of Somalia comes into play.   In the last days of 2006, the Transitional Federal Government of the Somali Republic (TFG), made up of Somali citizens in exile and supported by the United Nations as well as Ethiopian troops, ousted the Islamic regime from Mogadishu. Peace keeping forces from the African Union are expected to support the transitional government in its bid to control the country.
As is the case with many other emerging nations, the Federal Republic of Somalia has chosen to use the issuance of non-circulating legal tender coins (NCLTs) as a means of raising much needed revenues to support their cause.

These six enameled, legal tender, One Dollar coins were minted in England by authority of the Transitional Federal Government of the Somali Republic and are sure to be very popular among motorcycling enthusiasts as well as collectors of uniquely designed world coins everywhere.