Catalog
250 Dollars - Elizabeth II Steffi Graf
| Issuer | Niue |
|---|---|
| Year | 1988 |
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| Orientation | Medal alignment ↑↑ |
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|---|---|
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| Reverse description | A three-quarter length portrait of tennis champion Steffi Graf is rendered in the central field, depicted holding a large trophy cup in her left hand and a tennis racket in her right, with a broad smile. An olive-branch wreath frames the central device on both sides. The circular legend along the upper rim reads XXIV OLYMPIC GAMES SEOUL 1988 · STEFFI GRAF · MASTERS CHAMPION 1987, with a dot separator, all in raised Latin letters. The denomination 250 DOLLARS is inscribed in two lines in the lower exergue. |
| Reverse script | Latin |
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| Additional information |
Niue's 1988 gold sports commemorative series was essentially a licensing operation — the island nation had negligible gold reserves and no meaningful numismatic tradition, but its status as a self-governing territory in free association with New Zealand allowed it to issue legal tender coinage. Graf was the natural subject that year: she had just completed the Golden Slam, winning all four Grand Slam titles plus the Seoul Olympic gold, the only tennis player in history to accomplish that in a single calendar year.
Mintages were kept deliberately low to sustain collector premiums, a pattern Niue repeated across dozens of celebrity and sports issues through the late 1980s and 1990s.