10 Riyals - Pope Paul VI Papal Visit to Australia

Fujairah was one of the smaller Trucial States still negotiating the terms of what would become the UAE when this piece was struck, and its sheikhs discovered quickly that international collector coins were a reliable revenue stream before federation rendered the individual state issues obsolete in 1972. Pope Paul VI visited Australia in December 1970 — the first papal visit to the continent — which gave coin issuers worldwide a pretext to produce commemoratives with no connection whatsoever to Fujairah.

The .999 fineness is notably purer than the .925 common to most silver commemoratives of the period, a deliberate sales point for the collector market rather than any minting tradition.