150 Pesetas Guineanas Rome

Equatorial Guinea gained independence from Spain in October 1968, and within two years the new government contracted the Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato in Rome to produce its first commemorative coinage. The arrangement was practical — the country had no mint of its own and limited infrastructure — but the Rome-struck issues of 1970 also served the foreign exchange ambitions of Francisco Macías Nguema's government, which was already courting hard currency through coin sales to European collectors rather than domestic circulation.

Macías would be executed by firing squad nine years later following one of the most brutal dictatorships in post-colonial African history. These coins left the country before any of that unraveled.