1 Peso Kon-Tiki

The Kon-Tiki expedition of 1947 — Thor Heyerdahl's 101-day, 4,300-mile drift from Peru to Polynesia on a balsa raft — was never a Cuban story, which makes this issue an artifact of Cold War numismatic diplomacy as much as anything else. Cuba's collector coin program of the 1980s aggressively courted hard currency from Western buyers, producing themed series on subjects with broad international appeal regardless of any connection to the island.

Heyerdahl's 1950 account of the voyage became one of the best-selling Norwegian books ever published and was translated into dozens of languages, giving the subject instant recognition value in export markets.