1 Crown - Elizabeth II Year of the Ocean - Whale, Silver Proof

Pobjoy Mint produced this piece for the British Virgin Islands as part of a broader push in the late 1990s toward themed environmental collector series — a market that was expanding rapidly as conservation imagery proved reliably popular with non-circulating proof buyers. The "Year of the Ocean" designation references the 1998 International Year of the Ocean, a UN-coordinated initiative that prompted dozens of mints worldwide to issue commemorative coinage, flooding the secondary market with similar material almost immediately.

KM#897a distinguishes the silver proof from the cupro-nickel circulation strike issued the same year.