1 Dollar St. Francis of Assisi, colored

Palau's legal tender coinage program, launched in the 1990s, was entirely export-driven — these pieces were never intended to circulate and were sold directly to the collector market through licensed distributors. The Saint Francis issue sits within a long series of small-format gold devotional coins targeting European Catholic collectors, a demographic Palau's licensing partners identified early as reliably profitable.

At 1.24 g of .990 fine gold, the actual bullion content is negligible. The commercial logic was margin on novelty, not metal value.