1 Dollar - Elizabeth II Venice

Part of the Cook Islands' long-running series commemorating the great trading cities of the medieval Mediterranean, this issue draws on Venice's role as the dominant silver-coinage market of the 13th and 14th centuries — the Venetian grosso and later the ducat set weight and purity benchmarks that rival mints across Europe scrambled to match. The Cook Islands has issued hundreds of numismatic pieces under licensing arrangements that effectively make it one of the world's most prolific small-nation minting programs, with the New Zealand Mint handling production.