1000 Francs CFA Vladimir Vysotsky

Benin's commemorative program has long been operated not by Beninese monetary authorities in any meaningful sense, but by European private minting houses — chiefly the Monnaie de Paris and various Austrian and Polish contractors — who license the BCEAO's issuing authority to produce collector pieces with no genuine circulation intent. This coin is one of those. Vysotsky, the Soviet singer-poet and actor who died in 1980 at 42, remains a figure of extraordinary cultural grip in Russia and the former Soviet states, which is precisely the target collector market here — not Benin.