1 Cent

The Cocos (Keeling) Islands coinage of 1968 was not government-issued currency but a private token series authorized by the Clunies-Ross family, who had governed the atoll as a personal fiefdom since the 19th century. These plastic tokens replaced an earlier ivory and aluminum series and functioned as the sole medium of exchange on the island, redeemable only at the Clunies-Ross company store — a arrangement that effectively kept the Cocos Malay workforce in a controlled economic loop until Australian federal intervention dismantled the system in the 1980s.