25 ECU Tower Bridge

The ECU — European Currency Unit — was never legal tender in the conventional sense but existed as a basket currency used for accounting within the European Monetary System from 1979. By the early 1990s, a cottage industry of ECU-denominated collector pieces had sprung up across Europe, most issued by small mints or minor jurisdictions looking to capture souvenir demand ahead of anticipated monetary union. The Tower Mint, a private contract mint operating in London, produced this piece on its own authority rather than for any sovereign government.

Britain's fraught relationship with European integration — the pound was ejected from the Exchange Rate Mechanism in September 1992, just months before this coin's issue date — gives the timing a certain irony.