250 Rupees Pope Benedict XVI

Issued in the weeks following Joseph Ratzinger's election on April 19, 2005, this piece was part of a wave of commemorative gold struck by small-nation mints capitalizing on the global attention surrounding the papal transition after John Paul II's death. Seychelles had no particular ecclesiastical relationship with the Vatican to justify the issue — the connection is purely commercial, a licensing arrangement common among Pacific and Indian Ocean island states whose minting programs exist almost entirely for the collector market rather than circulation.