20 Lepta Regime of the Colonels

Issued by the military junta that had ruled Greece since the 1967 coup, this coin appeared in the final months of the regime. By mid-1973 the colonels had abolished the monarchy and declared a republic — a political maneuver that fooled no one and satisfied almost no one. The junta collapsed the following year after the Cyprus debacle, making this among the last coinage produced under a government that had printed its own legitimacy as aggressively as it minted aluminum.