1 Dollar - Elizabeth II Sir Francis Drake

Pobjoy Mint struck this piece for the British Virgin Islands, one of dozens of themed commemorative dollars the mint produced for that territory across the late 1990s and 2000s. Drake's 1579 anchorage in what is now California during his circumnavigation gave Britain a long-contested territorial claim to the Pacific coast — a claim Spain vigorously disputed and which was quietly shelved once Anglo-Spanish relations required it. The BVI commemorative series was frankly commercial in intent, driven by collector sales rather than any circulating monetary need.