25 Dollars - Leonard I - George Orwell - Essai Bronze

Hutt River Province — the self-declared micronation established in Western Australia by Leonard Casley in 1970 after a dispute with the state government over wheat quotas — issued a series of essai coinage throughout the 1980s that functioned more as collectible curiosities than circulating currency. This 1984 bronze essai commemorates George Orwell, whose choice of year as the title of his most famous novel made it an irresistible hook for commemorative issuers worldwide that year. Casley, who styled himself Prince Leonard I, was a shrewd self-promoter; the Orwell tie-in was almost certainly calculated to attract collector attention rather than mark any particular literary anniversary.