100 Dram Franz Beckenbauer

Armenia's commemorative silver program has occasionally ventured into peculiar territory, and this piece — honoring a West German footballer on a coin issued by a landlocked Caucasian republic — is a fair example. Beckenbauer won the World Cup in 1974 as captain and again in 1990 as manager, the only man to achieve both. Armenia's central bank issued a run of sports celebrity coins during this period under licensing arrangements common to small-nation commemorative programs, where the connection between subject and issuer is essentially commercial rather than historical.