20 Rials - Qaboos 25th National Day, Silver

Oman's 25th National Day commemorates the 1970 coup in which Qaboos bin Said deposed his own father, Said bin Taimur, ending a reign so isolationist that the country had fewer than ten kilometers of paved road and a handful of schools. The transformation Qaboos oversaw in the following quarter-century was dramatic enough to make a silver commemorative politically defensible.

Struck in sterling-grade silver at a moment when Gulf states were actively building numismatic programs to diversify revenue, this KM#143 issue is relatively common in original packaging.