1 Tala - Tanumafili II Captain Cook

Issued to mark the bicentennial of Cook's third Pacific voyage, which brought him through Samoan waters in the late 1770s — though Cook himself never landed on Samoa proper. The commemorative program Samoa ran through the late 1970s was partly a revenue exercise exploiting collector demand for Pacific-themed issues, a common strategy among newly independent island nations building foreign exchange through numismatic bureaus.

Tanumafili II, joint head of state at the time of issue, would eventually outlive his co-leader to become the world's last reigning monarch to have been born under colonial rule.