1 Dollar - Elizabeth II First Man in Space

The title is wrong. Yuri Gagarin completed his 108-minute orbital flight on April 12, 1961 — a date the Soviets held back from public announcement until the capsule had safely re-entered, wary of having to explain a failure. Cook Islands has issued commemorative dollars prolifically since the 1970s, largely as a revenue mechanism rather than for domestic circulation, and this silver piece falls squarely into that collector-market pipeline.