10 Tālā - Tanumafili II John Paul II

Issued the year Tanumafili II died, making this a peculiar commemorative — the coin honors a papal visit that occurred decades earlier while the head of state it names on the obverse was himself in his final months. John Paul II had visited Samoa in 1984 during his exhaustive Pacific tour. Both men died in 2005, Tanumafili in May, John Paul II in April, lending this small gold piece an unintended elegiac quality that no issuing authority could have planned.