25 Cents - Elizabeth II 4th portrait

The Cayman Islands shifted from cupro-nickel to nickel-plated steel for this series largely as a cost-reduction measure — a quiet but telling sign of how small-island currency economics work when local circulation volumes are too low to justify premium alloy costs. The fourth portrait of Elizabeth II, by Ian Rank-Broadley, replaced the Raphael Maklouf effigy across most Commonwealth issues in 1998, and Cayman adopted it promptly for this long-running type.

The twenty-year span of this issue reflects the territory's conservative approach to coinage reform — a stability driven less by tradition than by the sheer cost of retooling dies for a population under 70,000.