The Koala (Part 8) — Crypto Stamp Fantastic Animals

Series Overview

The Fantastic Animals series is a twelve-part run of small-sheet crypto stamps issued by Philately Liechtenstein / Liechtensteinische Post AG. It began in December 2022 with the Cat in Sunglasses and unfolded across 2022–2024, each release presenting a single playful vector-art animal character in a set of colour variants. The Koala is part 8 of the twelve.

This Release (Koala)

The Koala was issued on 4 April 2024 under product number 297.24.03, with a face value of CHF 9.50. It continues the established series format: one anthropomorphic animal rendered in bright, flat vector art, offered across several colour variants of differing scarcity. Stylistically the Koala sits squarely within the Fantastic Animals house look — friendly, character-driven, and built for small-sheet collecting rather than for game mechanics.

Colour Variants

Three variants of the Koala are documented (print runs for green and violet per crypto-stamps.org):

• Rainbow: 50 copies (rarest)
• Green: 2,000 copies
• Violet: 3,950 copies (most common)

The three documented variants sum to 6,000, but the official total mintage has not been published, and a further colour cannot be ruled out. The figure of 6,000 should therefore be read as the documented minimum, not a confirmed total. Within the documented set, the Rainbow is the clear standout, limited to just 50 numbered copies.

Technical Implementation / Authenticity

The Koala is a pre-September-2024 issue, and this is the key point for collectors: its authenticity relies on OriginStamp blockchain hash-anchoring, not on a tradeable token. In this model a cryptographic hash of the item's data is anchored to a public blockchain as a tamper-evident timestamp — it proves authenticity, but it is not an ERC-721 or ERC-1155 NFT and cannot be transferred on-chain like one.

Liechtenstein's first true tradeable NFTs arrived only later, with the Crypto/Business Fox edition of September 2024. Everything issued before that point in the Fantastic Animals run, the Koala included, belongs to the earlier hash-anchoring generation.

Design Attribution

The design is attributed to Isabella Gassner (Liechtenstein), confirmed as the designer of the 2024 crypto stamp editions. Her Koala follows the series signature: bold outlines, saturated colour fields, and a good-natured animal character conceived for a collector audience rather than a gamified app experience.

Position in the Fantastic Animals Series

As part 8 of twelve, the Koala falls in the later stretch of the series, well after the December 2022 debut of the Cat in Sunglasses. It represents the mature, settled phase of Fantastic Animals: the format, the variant-and-scarcity structure, and the vector-art identity were all long established by April 2024. Its historical significance is chiefly that it is one of the last editions of the OriginStamp hash-anchoring era, issued in the months just before Liechtenstein's shift to genuine tradeable NFTs.