The last surviving species of an entire turtle family, a freshwater animal with flippers like a sea turtle’s and a fleshy, pig-like snout: the pig-nosed turtle swims across the reverse of Papua New Guinea’s 1979 5 toea.

It lives in the rivers and lagoons of New Guinea and northern Australia; on the coin it swims to the right above the denomination «5t». The obverse bears the national arms, a bird of paradise over a spear and kundu drum, with «PAPUA NEW GUINEA» and the date.

Toea and kina coins arrived in 1975, when the country replaced the Australian dollar with its own currency; both names come from shell money, the kina being a prized pearl shell and the toea a small shell for everyday trade. The 1979 coin belongs to the first, copper-nickel 5 toea type, struck until 1999; since 2002 the denomination has been made of nickel-plated steel.

Grade F-VF: the coin circulated and the relief shows clear wear, yet the turtle, the arms and the legends remain legible. A genuine piece of pocket change from the young nation’s first years, suited to a 5 toea date run or a reptiles-on-coins topic set.

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