1000 Shillings Admiral Nelson

Uganda's issuance of a coin honoring Horatio Nelson sits in the long tradition of Pacific and African sovereign mints producing commemorative foreign subjects for the collector market — pieces with no organic connection to the issuing nation's history, struck primarily for export revenue. Nelson died at Trafalgar in October 1805, and the 1999 date places this coin at the near-midpoint between that battle's 194th anniversary and its bicentennial, which in 2005 prompted a far larger wave of commemoratives from issuers worldwide.