2 Dollars - Elizabeth II Alexander von Humboldt

Cook Islands ran an aggressive commemorative program through the 2000s, licensing portrait rights and historical subjects through the New Zealand-based Pacific coin trade — Humboldt appearing here as part of a broader "Famous Explorers" series distributed primarily through European collector channels rather than anything resembling domestic circulation. These pieces were never intended to cross a shop counter in Rarotonga.

Humboldt died in Berlin in 1859, five years into the reign of the monarch whose profile would eventually end up sharing metal with his. The pairing is purely commercial.