400 Līrah / Livres XIII Winter Olympics

Lebanon issued this coin during one of the most turbulent stretches of its civil war, which had already consumed five years of the country by 1980. The XIII Winter Olympics series was a prestige mintage aimed squarely at foreign collectors — domestic circulation was essentially irrelevant given the conditions on the ground in Beirut.

The Lake Placid games themselves were dominated off the ice by the U.S. boycott debate over Afghanistan, which had begun just weeks before the February opening ceremony.