1000 Tala - Tanumafili II Royal Wedding

This issue commemorates the 1986 wedding of Malietoa Tanumafili II's son, Faleolo Tanumafili, rather than the head of state himself — a distinction the catalog name obscures. Tanumafili II was the O le Ao o le Malo, the constitutional head of state of Western Samoa, and one of the longest-serving such figures in the Pacific; he held the position until his death in 2007. Royal wedding gold issues from small Pacific nations in the mid-1980s were produced in very limited quantities primarily for the collector market, with minimal domestic circulation demand.