Flat Earth and Numismatics

In the last few days (but see note at end), I've seen endless posts in flat-earth groups showing this coin, often misidentified as being Italian.  It's from the Republic of San Marino, the fifth-smallest country in the world, and while it is entirely surrounded by Italy, it's a separate country.   Before both countries changed their currency to the Euro, the Sammarinese lira had the same value as the Italian.

The would also sometimes show a screenshot of a page about this coin, that explained that this shows "Model of flat earth, three stars shining above, value and date below".  A screenshot, not a link, because if you visited the page, you'd see that on the obverse (front) of the coin is

Sometimes they would insist that's not a globe, but we'd show them that the same site described the reverse of the next coin in the series as "Spherical earth as seen from moon".

The series is called Toward the third millennium - Man & the exploration of his world, all of the coins have the same image on the obverse, and the coins in it would have something old on the reverse of one, and something new on the next.

The 50 Lire coin shows a sailboat, the 100 a submarine under the Arctic ice-cap

 

The 200 Lire has Stonehenge beneath stars and the 500 the surface of the Moon, radio waves, and Saturn

The 1000 Lire coin has a human profile, the North star, waves of Mediterranean and Nile delta and a wind rose, the 5000 a map of Europe and North Africa, the solar system, and an antenna dish in a human mind

Note: while this has really taken off recently, I found a few posts about this from nearly a year ago, I think this is the earliest.  And then I found this one from 2021