25 Cents - Elizabeth II 1st portrait

The British Caribbean Territories (Eastern Caribbean) currency authority was established in 1950 to provide a unified coinage for a collection of colonies that included Barbados, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Windward Islands — territories that had previously relied on a patchwork of local and imported currency. This series ran only until 1965, when the gradual process of decolonization began fragmenting the issuing authority as individual territories moved toward independence or separate monetary arrangements.

The decade-long window of this type's production coincides almost exactly with the unraveling of the West Indies Federation, dissolved in 1962 after Jamaica and Trinidad both voted to leave.