Fact or Fiction: Patchwork Platypus 2024 Niue $5 2oz Silver Proof Coin

In 1799, shortly after colonisation of New South Wales began, zoologists in Britain received the pelt of a bizarre new animal... Instantly, they decried "Hoax!"! And, why wouldn't they? This absurd specimen had the beak of a duck, the tail of a beaver, webbed feet, a venomous spine, and supposedly... it laid eggs! Preposterous!

So it is, that before Australia was even named, the nation had been accused of perpetrating hoaxes on the world. In the animal kingdom, this Fact or Fiction conundrum includes such creatures as the Yowie, the big black cats of the bush, the Drop Bear, and even mainland remnants of the extinct Tasmanian Tiger. Plus, of course, the utterly absurd duck-billed, beaver-tailed, egg-laying mammal, the Platypus.

How many of these animals are real and how many just a hoax? Only Australians know the real Fact or Fiction.

Minted from two ounce of 99.9% pure silver, this cool collectable features the Platypus reimagined just as the original British scientists thought it - a sewn together patchwork of a creature, as if created by some Aussie Bush Frankenstein in a castle atop a cliff. Featuring superb detail and sparkling metallic background colour, the Patchwork Platypus is limited to a mintage of just 300 worldwide...