10 Dollars - Elizabeth II Black Swan Treasure

The Black Swan was a Spanish merchant vessel lost off the coast of Portugal in 1804, carrying an enormous cargo of silver and gold coins from the Americas. Odyssey Marine Exploration located the wreck in 2007 and recovered approximately 594,000 coins — triggering an international legal dispute between the United States, Spain, and Peru that ran until 2012, when a U.S. appeals court ruled the entire hoard must be returned to Spain.

Cook Islands issued this piece while that litigation was still unresolved, incorporating genuine recovered coins from the wreck into some versions of the series.