10 Dollars - Elizabeth II Bottlenose dolphin

The Cook Islands' late-1990s and early-2000s wildlife gold program was issued under arrangement with foreign minting houses, with the Cook Islands acting as a nominal issuing authority for coins that never circulated domestically. The KM#1100 dolphin issue belongs to this wave of small-denomination fractional gold pieces — legal tender in theory, collector product in practice — produced at a moment when Pacific island mint programs were proliferating rapidly as revenue instruments.

At roughly 1.24 grams of .999 fine gold, this is a one-tenth-quarter-ounce piece, a size that became briefly fashionable around 2000 before the market for such fractionals softened considerably.