10 Dollars Frauenkirche Dresden

Nauru — an eight-square-mile phosphate island in the central Pacific — has no historical or economic connection to the Frauenkirche in Dresden, and that is precisely the point. By 2004, Nauru's actual phosphate reserves were effectively exhausted, and the government had turned aggressively to coin licensing programs as a revenue stream, contracting with European distributors to produce collector pieces targeting the German commemorative market. This particular issue coincided with the final stages of the Frauenkirche's reconstruction, completed in 2005 after a rebuilding effort that began in 1994 — the church itself having been reduced to rubble in the February 1945 firebombing of Dresden.