25 000 Sucres Balsa de Guayaquil

Ecuador's sucre was already dead by the time this coin was struck. The country had officially dollarized in September 2000, replacing the sucre with the US dollar following a catastrophic banking crisis that wiped out roughly half of Ecuador's financial institutions between 1998 and 2000. This piece is therefore a commemorative issued in a currency that no longer circulated — a collector artifact denominated in a unit of account that had ceased to exist as legal tender two years prior.

The Balsa de Guayaquil references the pre-Columbian balsa wood sailing rafts used by coastal Ecuadorian traders, first documented by Spanish conquistadors in 1526 when Bartolomé Ruiz encountered one off the coast of what is now Ecuador.