1000 Francs CFA Rickmer Rickmers

The *Rickmer Rickmers* is a three-masted steel barque launched at Hamburg in 1896, built by the Rickmers family's own shipyard for their rice trade with Southeast Asia. She was seized by Portugal in 1914, sold to Germany again after the war, served as a training vessel under the name *Sagres*, and eventually ended up as a permanently moored museum ship on the Hamburg waterfront — a career spanning nearly a century across four flags.

Benin has no maritime connection to this ship whatsoever. The coin belongs to a long series of numismatic issues produced for the international collector market under Beninese authority, commissioned rather than conceived locally.