1000 Francs CFA St. Petersburg Lighthouse

Benin's franc CFA coinage has long been issued not for circulation but for the international collector market, with the government licensing designs through European distributors — most commonly through firms in Germany and Poland. This lighthouse series, struck at the Saint Petersburg Mint in Russia, is part of a broader wave of sub-Saharan African collector issues that proliferated in the 2000s and 2010s, bearing little connection to the issuing nation beyond the legal authority to produce a coin under its name.

The Saint Petersburg Mint, one of Russia's oldest surviving state mints, struck numerous foreign collector pieces during this period as part of commercial contracts.