1 oz Silver African Wildlife Leopard 2024 (Mintage: 5,000 | partially gold-plated)
Special offer: Product is currently on sale- Secure shipping: 100% insured & anonymous delivery
- Kettner Bullion: Already over 280,000 satisfied customers
Price alert 
Share
African Wildlife · Somalia 2024
Rosette and spot, two coats for two worlds.
African Wildlife Leopard 2024, 1 ounce silver, picture side
The leopard’s coat suits its life in trees, in the forest and at night. The 2024 coin shows a leopard mother with her cub.
The leopard
From the desert to the rainforest
Desert
Mountain forest
Rainforest
No other big cat is as widespread: leopards live in some 62 countries across Africa and Eurasia, in deserts, savannas, mountains and rainforests.
They prefer rocky ground with dense bush and riverine forest. The leopard climbs well, spends much of its time in trees and is mostly active at night, as a loner.
Its coat carries dark, irregular spots, the rosettes; the base colour ranges from pale yellow in warm, dry regions to reddish orange in dense forests. Instead of purring, it calls with a rough, rasping sound.
The cheetah
The only one of its genus
Its genus, Acinonyx, has no other living member today. The cheetah needs wide, open land and is mostly active by day, unlike many other cats.
Its coat carries solid, round or oval black spots from 1.9 to 3.8 centimetres; only the throat and belly stay white. The tail ends in four to six black rings.
Cheetahs do not roar; their most common call is a chirp. Females live alone, while males often join up in groups.
Why two patterns
The coat often suits where the cat lives
Rosette
For trees, forest and night.
Spot
Black, without a ring.
A study of 35 cat species shows that whether a coat is patterned is linked to the habitat. How intricate and irregular the pattern is also relates to life in trees and to activity at night.
Over the course of evolution, such camouflage adapts comparatively quickly to a way of life. In the grey grass where cheetahs often live, their spots can take up the shadows of the blades and let the animals merge with their surroundings.
Allen et al. 2011, Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Rosette
For trees, forest and night.
Spot
Black, without a ring.
Allen et al. 2011, Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Rare coats
A black panther can be a leopard
Leopards with melanism, that is with almost black fur, are often called black panthers. Black cheetahs, by contrast, are not known.
In the rare king cheetah, the spots merge into blotches and stripes. It is not a species of its own but carries a rare variant of the gene Taqpep, which shapes the variations of the tabby pattern in domestic cats.
Young cheetahs wear a coat of their own as well: a thick, silvery grey mantle along the back, which they shed at about three months of age.
African Wildlife · Somalia
The leopard on both sides
Somalia’s coat of arms of 1956 shows a gold-framed shield held by two leopards standing on spears. So each of these coins shows the leopard on both sides: as the motif of the picture side and twice over as a supporter of the shield on the value side.
Two leopardsTwo leopards hold the arms of Somalia
Leopard and cheetah in more series
Big FiveTwo coins side by side make one whole face.
LiberiaLeopards in gold and silver, exclusively for Kettner Edelmetalle.
1/1,000 ounce of goldRosette and spot in the same small format.
At a glance
- Series
- African Wildlife
- Metal
- silver
- Weight
- 1 ounce
- Fineness
- 999.9/1,000
- Country of issue
- Somalia
- Face value
- 100 Shillings
- Year
- 2024
- Finish
- partly gilded
- Mintage
- 5,000 pieces
- Mint
- Bavarian Central Mint
- Packaging
- coin capsule
Leopard and cheetah
Both are listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.
Product depiction may differ from the final product.
