100 Francs CFA Elizabeth II, second portrait

Benin adopted the CFA franc as part of the West African Economic and Monetary Union, though the country has periodically flirted with abandoning it — most notably under Mathieu Kérékou's Marxist-Leninist government of the 1970s and 80s, when the state was renamed the People's Republic of Benin and collectivized industries wholesale. The CFA survived regardless. This piece, however, has nothing to do with circulation: Benin has been a prolific issuer of collector-market copper and silver pieces for decades, many bearing foreign monarchs with no organic connection to the country.

The second Gillick portrait of Elizabeth II was used on Commonwealth coinage from roughly 1953 onward, replaced in most jurisdictions by the Arnold Machin effigy in 1968.