10 Tala South Pacific Games

The 1983 South Pacific Games were held in Samoa (then Western Samoa), making this one of the few host-nation commemorative issues where the event and the issuing country directly coincided. Samoa used the occasion to produce several collector pieces targeting the burgeoning Pacific-region numismatic market of the early 1980s, a strategy common among smaller Commonwealth nations seeking foreign exchange through coin programs administered largely through external distributors.