25 ECU Tower Bridge

The ECU — European Currency Unit — was never legal tender in Britain, which made these issues an odd political gesture from a government that had just been forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in September 1992. Black Wednesday, as it became known, cost the Treasury an estimated £3.3 billion in a single day. Issuing commemorative ECU pieces the following year carried an irony that few in Whitehall seemed eager to acknowledge.

The series quietly ended as the EU moved toward the physical euro, which Britain declined to adopt.