Werner Stiefel, an upstate New York pharmaceutical manufacturer, convinced a small gang of eager young libertarians to help him build a ferro-cement boat called "Atlantis II" in 1969. This vessel was supposed to sail down to the Caribbean, where the crew might grab some land in disputed territories such as Anguilla or the Silver Shoals near Haiti, or just use the ship as a staging ground to build some artificial concrete land.

The schemers had their own silver coin, dubbed the "deca"; they got some press in Esquire; and they had their own homemade boat. But the ship sank in a hurricane, attention from the Haitian government forced the project into quiet mode (canceling the highly entertaining newsletter Atlantis News), and no new libertarian Atlantis ever arose in the Caribbean.

The 1933 5 (bronze) and 20 (silver) Skaloj pieces were possibly dispensed that same year at the Century of Progress International Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. Both coins, are dedicated to Christiano I, Prince Regent. I've also seen images of a set of six Skaloj/Dalo stamps from 1935 featuring Queen Marie.

It is tentatively speculated that the term employed for the coins' denomination may have a linguistic connection to Esperanto: whereby a "skalo" (adding the "j" renders it plural) is a scale of measurement — a system of ordered marks at fixed intervals; a calibrated line; a progressive classification, as of size, amount, importance, or rank (e.g. a wage scale, a musical scale, the scale on a map).

KINGDOM OF ATLANTIS: This coin is the valiant creation of Mr. Edward J. Moschetti (worldproofna@aol.com), the founder/President of the World Proof Numismatic Association (PO Box 4094, Pittsburgh, PA, 15201-0094). They have been a purveyor of these desirable types of coins since 1964, and they carry a fantastic stock of proof coinage. Please write to them and they will mail you any information you request.

I commend and applaud Mr. Moschetti's decisively bold transition into the designing and minting of his own patterns. I purchased the copper MMIV 20 Atlantis Dollars, but there are also a silver and gold 100 Atlantis Dollars. The obverse "features a small girl perhaps one of Poseidon’s children in the foreground with lake and mountains in background." The reverse "features Poseidon, the God of Atlantis along with his mortal wife Cleito standing in front of the Golden Gates of Atlantis."

Mr. Moschetti would go on to issue additional versions of the popular 20/100 Atlantis Dollars (the obverse being the only side that is markedly different): the 2007 edition features "two Atlantis boatsmen in their outrigger", and the 2009 edition features an "Atlantis woman bathing in a lake, with a waterfall in front of her. A Temple appears on the upper left part of the background."

Images of Atlantis' coinage can be viewed at the Coin Library of the USNS: http://www.usns.info/coin-atlantiskingdom.html They can also be seen at the Web-site of Mr. Jorge Fernández Vidal: http://www.jfvcoins.com/Productos/micronations_english=catAC.html