2 Lekë

By 1989, Albania under Ramiz Alia was beginning to crack open the most hermetically sealed state in Europe — though coins like this one were still struck under the full apparatus of Hoxha-era central planning, which had prohibited private ownership of foreign currency since 1946. The country had no external debt by constitutional mandate, an economic peculiarity that made its internal coinage largely ceremonial in a command economy where prices were fixed and shortages were routine.