PlatinumDuck

gxseries- Thank you, that link helps a lot!

Thanks for the response gxseries. I see that the brown bears, tigers, and lynx show up on ebay quite often. The sable and the snow leopard show up on occasion and the asian leopard and beaver also seem common to find. But the polar bears seem absent aside from the silver coins. I'm just curious as to why I have never been able to find the gold polar bear coins, yet the rest of the gold animals in this series seems pretty easy to find. I'll just keep looking. Thanks.

Greetings all, I enjoy coins featuring wildlife. In my opinion Russia has some of the most beautiful wildlife coins int he Red Data Book series and the Protect Our World Series. My question here concerns the Protect our World Series. They were issued starting in 1993 with the Brown Bear and followed with the Sable, Lynx, Tiger, Polar Bear, Snow Leopard, Reindeer, Beaver, and most recently another Leopard species( I forget which one). There are both Silver and gold coins in this series. I have seen pictures or auctions of all of the different issues except for the Gold Polar Bears. How rare are these coins? I particularly like Bears on coins, so I am interested in them and why they never appear for sale anywhere. It seems the Brown Bear is the most common of the gold coins I see for sale, followed by the Tiger and Lynx. I have seen some of the gold coins of the new leopard, beaver, reindeer, and snow leopard. I have never seen the polar bears(other than the pictures on the bank of Russia website). Are they just harder to find because they didn't come in sets? Were any of these coins melted? Any insight is appreciated. Thanks!