20 Cents - Cocos Keeling Islands Fantasy Issue

The Cocos (Keeling) Islands briefly operated its own plastic token coinage from 1977 to 1979 under the Clunies-Ross family, who had governed the atoll as a personal fiefdom since the nineteenth century. After Australia formally annexed the islands and abolished the token currency, a series of fantasy issues — carrying no official authorization from the Australian government — began appearing attributed to the territory. The X# prefix in Krause's catalog designates exactly this status: non-monetary, privately produced pieces with no issuing authority behind them.