10 Dollars - Elizabeth II Battle with Three Heroes at Hulao Pass

Part of Cook Islands' long-running series commemorating scenes from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the 14th-century Chinese historical novel by Luo Guanzhong. The Hulao Pass episode — in which Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei together fight the warlord Lü Bu — is among the most celebrated set pieces in the entire text, and its selection here reflects the commercial appetite for that series in East Asian collector markets during the early 2000s.

Cook Islands issued a substantial volume of large-format silver pieces in this period under licensing arrangements that kept production costs low while targeting overseas buyers. Actual distribution through Cook Islands itself was essentially nil.