10 Tala - Tanumafili II Charles de Gaulle

Issued the year before Tanumafili II died in office — he would serve until 2007 as the world's last remaining head of state born in the nineteenth century — this piece pairs him with de Gaulle for reasons that are largely commercial rather than historical. The Free France connection to the Pacific is real enough: de Gaulle's forces administered French Polynesia and New Caledonia, but Samoa was a New Zealand mandate with no meaningful Gaullist chapter.

The 1.24g format places it in the fractional gold novelty category that dominated Pacific island coinage programs in the early 2000s, driven by collector demand rather than circulation need.