100 Rufiyaa 2000 Olympic Games

Issued ahead of the Sydney 2000 Games, this is one of dozens of near-identical Olympic commemoratives produced by small island nations in the late 1990s under licensing arrangements with the IOC. The Maldives had no athletes competing in Sydney. The coins were never intended for circulation and were sold directly to the collector market through third-party distributors — the issuing government received a flat fee.