10 Zaires Hotel Intercontinental

The 1971 Zairean platinum issues were struck to commemorate the country's renaming from the Democratic Republic of the Congo — Mobutu Sese Seko had formally renamed both the nation and the currency "Zaïre" as part of his authenticité campaign, a sweeping cultural nationalism program designed to purge colonial nomenclature. The Hotel Intercontinental in Kinshasa had opened the previous year as a flagship of Mobutu's modernization ambitions, making it a deliberately chosen subject for this prestige issue.

Platinum coinage from sub-Saharan Africa in 1971 is genuinely unusual. Mintages were minuscule, these were never intended for circulation, and most examples passed directly into foreign collections.