2 Dollars - Elizabeth II The Great Tea Race

The Great Tea Race of 1866 pitted clipper ships against one another in a near-simultaneous departure from Fuzhou, China, loaded with the season's first flush tea — the cargo that commanded premium prices if landed first in London. The Taeping beat the Ariel by a mere 28 minutes after 99 days at sea covering roughly 16,000 miles, a margin so absurd that the captains agreed to split the prize money.

Cook Islands has issued commemoratives under this general "racing" theme across several years; this is one of the smaller-format silver pieces in that run, struck by a private mint on commission rather than through any domestic minting infrastructure.