Jefferson Pérez won Ecuador's first-ever Olympic gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Games in the 20km race walk, triggering a national celebration that briefly overshadowed the country's deepening economic crisis. By 2006, Ecuador had already abandoned the sucre entirely — dollarization was completed in 2000 — making this a commemorative struck in a defunct currency, a detail that gives the piece an odd, elegiac quality without the catalog needing to say so.
Gold commemoratives denominated in sucres issued after dollarization exist in a legal gray zone; they are technically valid tender in a unit no longer in circulation.
Jefferson Pérez won Ecuador's first-ever Olympic gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Games in the 20km race walk, triggering a national celebration that briefly overshadowed the country's deepening economic crisis. By 2006, Ecuador had already abandoned the sucre entirely — dollarization was completed in 2000 — making this a commemorative struck in a defunct currency, a detail that gives the piece an odd, elegiac quality without the catalog needing to say so.
Gold commemoratives denominated in sucres issued after dollarization exist in a legal gray zone; they are technically valid tender in a unit no longer in circulation.