1000 Francs CFA 1996 Summer Olympic Games

The Republic of the Congo issued this piece as part of the wave of commemorative francs CFA struck by central African states in the mid-1990s — a period when several nations with minimal numismatic infrastructure licensed their minting rights to European producers, primarily in Germany and Belgium, to generate hard currency revenue. The coins had no meaningful domestic circulation and were produced entirely for the collector export market.

The 1996 Atlanta Games attracted an unusually large number of these licensed commemoratives from African issuers, many struck in quantities low enough to appear scarce but high enough to depress secondary market values within a decade of issue.