Before I get into the rest of the blog, I would like to say this blog is a bit rushed as I was a bit tight on time when writing it, hopefully you guys will still enjoy it!

Cats. I love them. I love them as much as I love dogs. What else do I love? Coins! So why not combine the two and write a little bit about cats on coins? 

Let's go back in time to look at the first ever cat on a coin! The first ever coin to feature a cat is also the first ever coin minted, believe it or not! This coin features a lion on the obverse, so not your ordinary house cat. This coin is referred to as the "Lydian Lion Trite." Its value is â…“ of a stater and is composed of electrum. Electrum occurs naturally and is an alloy of gold and silver. The first American coin to feature a lion is a commemorative silver dollar minted in 2017. It is called the "Lions Club International 2017 Centennial Dollar." You can find one on the U.S. mint's website for $51.95. It is out of stock at this moment, though.

When searching up "tiger" on numista (a coin website where you can find information about practically every coin), I get 446 results. The word "cat" gets me exactly 400 results. The word "lion" gets me 6,296 results. As you can see, big cats are more popular than small cats when it comes to coinage. This makes sense because big cats like the lion are known as "kings of the jungle." The reason this is important is because rulers love to show off that THEY are the kings. A great way to show that is putting fierce, scary, dangerous lions that represent you and your beautiful nation on your coinage. Of course this is not the case for every coin.

Big cats on coins: which are my favorite? I will include a few of my favorite coins that include big cats on them.

The first one is this Albanian coin: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces24317.html

The second one is and old Chilean coin: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces120565.html

The third one is a coin from Chad: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces139618.htm

The fourth one is: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces495.html 

And finally, I really like this one: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces95709.html

I know many people will not agree with my list. But I do not have time to look through 6,000+ coins to determine which one is the best...

Domestic cats on coins: which are my favorite? Before I include a list of my favorite coins that include domestic cats on them, I want to share a cool series of Canadian coins I found. The "Cats of Canada" coin series is an interesting set of coins that features four silver proof coins with both domestic and wild cats on them. This set was created in 1999. I thought I would just share that as I find it interesting.

The first coin is from Oman:https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces35634.html I feature it because it looks SPECTACULAR as a proof. I'll attach an image. 

The second coin is from Egypt: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces58141.html I feature it because of how fancy the cat looks! He's sitting there as if he is the king! So sassy.

I will not list more coins because a lot of them are from coin series.

U.S. coins with cats: The U.S. doesn't feature many coins with cats. I already mentioned the first U.S. coin to include a lion, but what about other cats? Well, there is one and it is a commemorative half dollar. The link is this: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces25254.html

Also, TECHNICALLY the San Antonio missions quarter has a lion on it. It is found on the top right of the reverse, above the right side of the cross.

Another coin series that features cats: There are countries that liked to create coin series for cats. I touched on this very briefly in the last section, but there are many cat coin series around the world. I will only talk about one, though. 

The cat series I will talk about is issued by the Isle of Man. They issue coins with different cats on each coin. The silver coins are .999 fine and weigh an ounce. The gold coins are made in .9999 fine gold and are made in 1/25, 1/10, 1/5, 1/2, and 1 ounce coins. If I am correct, there are 20 silver coins. Isle of man also made a couple circulation coins with cats on them. The 1 crown in 1970, the one penny in 1980-1983, the 10 pence in 2017-2019, and a circulating commemorative 25 pence coin in 1975. 

In conclusion: Cats and coins mix fairly well together.