Palau and its ghost-shaped silver coin

On 31 October 2026, at 9:00 p.m., El Nuevo Día (opens in a new tab) published Ángel O. Navarro’s column “La moneda fantasmagórica de Palau.” The standfirst says this republic began striking commemorative coins for collectors. The caption, visible without a subscription, describes a .999 silver ounce and a mintage of 2,500. The page’s summary places the piece in 2022. The opening the paper leaves readable talks about the myth of the noble savage and about Palau. The rest of the column is not in the public HTML. It is not a Notofilia record.

The 29 October note

Two days earlier, the same author signed “La República de Palau y su fantasmagórica moneda de plata” in El Nuevo Día Educador (opens in a new tab) (29 October 2026, 6:00 a.m.). There the piece is described: 5 dollars, ghost-shaped, 2022, one ounce of .999 silver, mintage 2,500. Navarro calls it an authorized commemorative striking, of interest to numismatics. This collection does not have it.

Before the coin, the note runs through Palau’s contact with the West from the wreck of the Antelope in 1783, and through the Spanish, German, Japanese, and United States trust periods. Navarro writes that the archipelago has 340 islands, eight or nine of them inhabited, and a population of about 17,600. He places independence in October 1994, United Nations membership in December of that year, and sovereignty on 1 October 1994. He sets that against Puerto Rico, which, he writes, does not strike coin because it is not sovereign. Those figures, and that comparison, are his.

The dollar, and another ounce

Navarro writes that Palau does not circulate a paper of its own and that the United States dollar is the money of daily trade. The commemoratives, he says, are distributed above all by CIT Coin Invest AG — formerly Coin Invest Trust — a private firm he places with the phrase “based in Liechtenstein, Germany.” He also names NumisCollect and Mayer Mint as firms that have struck for Palau. The .999 silver ounce that is in this collection is a different one, from another country and for another purpose: the 1988 American Silver Eagle.