1 Dollar - Elizabeth II Princess Diana

Struck in the weeks following Diana's death in August 1997, this is one of dozens of near-identical commemorative dollars flooded onto the market by Pacific island jurisdictions with nominal ties to the Crown but no meaningful connection to the subject. Cook Islands issued prolifically through the 1990s under licensing arrangements with private distributors — the "issuer" in these cases was largely a legal formality. Collector demand was intense and briefly, then collapsed as the market absorbed tens of millions of similar pieces from Niue, Tuvalu, and others simultaneously.