Athena, Owls, and Niue

In the Pacific Ocean, there is an island known as Niue (pronounced: NEW'-way or knee-OO'-ay). It has an autonomous government by dispensation from New Zealand.^[3] Niue decided to honor the goddess Athena, from the pantheon of ancient Greece. Athena's totem was the owl, as it personifies Wisdom, as does She.^[2] So, a coin was struck in one troy ounce of 99.9% Fine Silver, with a nominal face value of two dollars (although the silver in the coin is worth much more than that!).

Fast-forward to 2024, when the Silver Gold Stackers (SGS) community on Hive decided to have a Monster Raffle. One of the donations was one of these beautiful coins, offered by @welshstacker and I happened to win it in the raffle! Welshie packaged the coin in an envelope and placed it in the postal service in July 2024, but it never arrived in my mailbox. A month or so later, he offered to send a second one, but I told him, "No, no! Don't bother doing that! It will show up eventually!

After not getting a "delivery received" report from me for another month, he went ahead and sent a second one, anyway. After flouncing through the postal and customs system for a while, it was finally opened by the authorities and returned to Welshie with a note regarding a "customs issue." He then tries again, a third time, and that envelope finally arrived to me on 06-Jan-2025!

As if that weren't strange enough — a raffle prize taking all that trouble to reach me — the backstory is equally weird. In the previous Monster Raffle before this last one, I put a silver round up for a prize, and Welshie won it. It took a whopping two-and-a-half months to reach his home in Wales from my home in North America! We have no clue if the delay was due to postal issues or customs issues, but it was crazy in this era of air freight.

I think the design on the front of the card is adorable, and potent when one understands the concept behind it. The artwork is a Christmas tree comprised of a human footprint, with a star atop. It was designed by Welshie's creative daughter and printed in cooperation with the World Land Trust. According to their Wikipedia page, the World Land Trust:

"raises money to buy and then protect environmentally-threatened land, and therefore species..."  ^[5]

All of their cards are printed from sustainably-sourced cardstock, as are their calendars and other fundraising merchandise. So, the design by Welshie's daughter represents the track of a human footprint upon the earth, and makes us mindful of our impact on the environment. Kudos to Welshie and his family for instilling such concepts in the up-and-coming generation!

Since Niue is connected to New Zealand, which in turn is connected to the UK, the late Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is depicted on the obverse of the coin, since it was minted in 2018 during her reign. In addition to her portrait and name is "NIUE" and "TWO DOLLARS" plus the year of minting at the bottom.

The reverse of this piece mirrors the design of the ancient Greek tetradrachm coin — tetra = four and drachma = a basic unit of Greek currency — worth four drachmae.^[4] In addition to the cute owl are an olive sprig and a crescent Moon. The Greek letters ΑΘΕ (alpha, theta, epsilon) stand for: Alethia Orno Eternia (Truth, Honor and Forever).^[1] And then the lovely "1 oz .999 Fine Silver" is always nice to see at the bottom!

BONUS for the geography geeks: Where exactly is Niue? I have marked it on the following screenshot from WorldMapPin, the world map for Hive posts! On the left-side is part of Australia, at bottom-center is New Zealand. No one on Hive has posted about being in Niue yet, but the green circle to the left of Niue has a "2" in it, where two Hiveans posted about whale watching. One of the posts was merely a wish to go there, but the other Hivean actually did go whale watching nearby! 🐋