10 000 Francs Independence

Dahomey issued this gold piece in 1971 to commemorate the eleventh anniversary of independence from France, part of a broader series of high-denomination commemorative issues that were never intended for domestic circulation. The country had virtually no indigenous gold-working tradition in the modern monetary sense, and these coins were produced entirely for the international collector market — most likely struck at the Paris Mint under contract.

Three years after this coin was issued, President Mathieu Kérékou's coup of October 1972 set the country on a path toward Marxist-Leninist governance, and by 1975 Dahomey ceased to exist as a name, replaced by the People's Republic of Benin.