200 Lekë Buthrotum Ruins

Albania's 1968–1970 gold commemorative series was produced under Enver Hoxha's isolationist regime at a moment when the country had severed ties with the Soviet Union and was pivoting toward China for support. Hard currency was desperately needed, and these coins were struck almost exclusively for foreign sale — few if any entered domestic circulation in a country where private gold ownership was effectively prohibited.

Butrint, the ancient Greco-Roman city on Albania's southern coast, had been excavated in the 1920s and 1930s under Italian archaeologist Luigi Ugolini, with Mussolini personally funding the dig. The ruins sat near the Greek border, making the site politically loaded for a regime simultaneously hostile to both Greece and the West.