250 Francs CFA Angela Merkel

Senegal has no constitutional authority to issue commemorative coinage bearing foreign heads of state, so pieces like this one exist entirely outside official monetary channels — produced by private minting operations exploiting the nominal CFA franc denomination for marketing purposes. The "250 Francs CFA" face value is effectively fictitious; no such denomination circulates in the UEMOA monetary union.

Merkel was still serving as German Chancellor when this was struck, which gave the issue a veneer of topicality. At 0.5 grams of .999 gold, the intrinsic metal value dwarfs the stated face denomination by a factor of roughly forty.