2000 Dobras Germany - 5 Pfennig

Obverse description	The national coat of arms of São Tomé and Príncipe is displayed prominently in the centre of the field, featuring two sea eagles as supporters flanking a shield bearing a palm tree, with scrollwork ribbons inscribed REPÚBLICA, PRÍNCIPE, and DEMOCRÁTICA DE S. TOMÉ, surmounted by a five-pointed star. Below the shield, two additional banners bear the national mottoes DISCIPLINA, UNIDADE, and TRABALHO. The circular legend REPÚBLICA DEMOCRÁTICA DE S. TOMÉ E PRÍNCIPE runs along the upper periphery, with the date 1999 inscribed in the lower exergue.
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Obverse lettering	REPÚBLICA DEMOCRÁTICA DE S. TOMÉ E PRÍNCIPE 1999
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Additional information	São Tomé and Príncipe's late-1990s commemorative program leaned heavily on the European currency transition as a marketing hook — this piece, like several in the series, uses the impending disappearance of the German mark as its subject. The 5 Pfennig was minted continuously from 1950 until the euro changeover in 2002, a half-century run that ended not from any monetary crisis but by scheduled obsolescence. The dobra denomination is purely notional here. These were struck for the collector market, never the islands' domestic economy.