Bermuda Coins

Bermuda sits a thousand kilometers from the nearest Caribbean island, alone in the North Atlantic, but its coins belong to the same tradition of British territory wildlife coinage that stretches from the Cayman Islands to the Bahamas. The Bermudian dollar was introduced in 1970, and the coin designs turned immediately to the island's natural world: a wild boar on the one cent, a queen angelfish on the five cents, a Bermuda lily on the ten cents, a white-tailed tropicbird on the twenty-five cents, and a Bermuda-fitted dinghy under sail on the dollar. Every denomination is a portrait of something that lives on or around the island.
 
Elizabeth II's portrait has appeared on the obverse of every Bermudian coin since the dollar's introduction, through four different sculptors' renderings over five decades. Bermuda is the oldest British Overseas Territory — continuously settled since 1612 — and its currency has maintained a one-to-one peg with the US dollar since inception. The coins have been struck at the Royal Mint and the Franklin Mint across compositions from copper-nickel and bronze to the nickel-plated steel of later issues, but the wildlife reverses have remained remarkably stable.
 
The reef system surrounding Bermuda is the northernmost coral reef in the Atlantic, and the marine life on these coins — the angelfish, the tropicbird diving for fish, the sailboat navigating the reef passages — reflects a territory defined by its relationship to the ocean. Bermuda's coins are smaller than its reputation, quieter than its fame as an offshore financial center, and more beautiful than most people expect from pocket change.