250 Dollars 500th Anniversary of the Americas

Issued to mark the quincentenary of Columbus's 1492 landfall, this coin belongs to a wave of commemorative gold struck across Caribbean and Latin American mints in the early 1990s — many of which sold poorly and were later melted. The Bahamas had particular reason to participate: San Salvador, within its territory, is among the most seriously argued candidates for the site of Columbus's first contact with the Americas, though that claim remains contested by scholars favoring other islands.