250 Dollars - Elizabeth II Tulip

The 250-dollar denomination sits in an awkward commercial niche the Royal Canadian Mint has occupied since the early 2000s — too expensive for casual collectors, too limited in mintage to attract serious bullion buyers. These large-format pure gold issues were positioned as prestige gift items as much as numismatic objects, and the Tulip series specifically was tied to the longstanding diplomatic symbolism of tulips between Canada and the Netherlands, rooted in the Dutch royal family's wartime exile in Ottawa from 1940 to 1945, during which Princess Margriet was born at the Ottawa Civic Hospital.