Ajman, smallest of the seven Trucial States, issued a series of gold commemoratives in the late 1960s and early 1970s that were never intended to circulate — produced almost entirely for the international collector and bullion market before the UAE federation dissolved the individual states' issuing authority in 1972. This piece honoring Lenin was part of a notably eclectic run from a sheikhdom with a population then measured in the low thousands, whose ruler Sheikh Rashid bin Humaid al-Naimi discovered that coin sales to foreign dealers generated revenue that dwarfed anything the local economy could produce.
The pairing of a Gulf Arab emirate with Soviet iconography raised eyebrows at the time and still does.
Ajman, smallest of the seven Trucial States, issued a series of gold commemoratives in the late 1960s and early 1970s that were never intended to circulate — produced almost entirely for the international collector and bullion market before the UAE federation dissolved the individual states' issuing authority in 1972. This piece honoring Lenin was part of a notably eclectic run from a sheikhdom with a population then measured in the low thousands, whose ruler Sheikh Rashid bin Humaid al-Naimi discovered that coin sales to foreign dealers generated revenue that dwarfed anything the local economy could produce.
The pairing of a Gulf Arab emirate with Soviet iconography raised eyebrows at the time and still does.