25 Pesos Bee Hummingbird

Cuba's Bee Hummingbird series targeted the international bullion and collector market aggressively through the 1990s, with the Cuban mint leveraging the country's extraordinary endemic biodiversity at a moment when hard currency was desperately needed following the collapse of Soviet subsidies. The Special Period — Cuba's term for the economic crisis that began in 1990 — pushed state enterprises to generate foreign exchange by any available means, and numismatic exports were one of the cleaner options.

KM#692 corresponds to the half-ounce gold denomination in this wildlife series.