5 Dollars Berlin Airlift - Above Berlin

Liberia's late-1990s commemorative program was frankly opportunistic — the country had no historical connection to the Berlin Airlift, and issues like this were produced almost exclusively for the collector export market, marketed heavily in Germany and the United States. The airlift itself ran from June 1948 to May 1949, with Western Allied aircraft completing over 200,000 flights into Tempelhof, Tegel, and Gatow to sustain a city of more than two million people through the Soviet blockade.

KM#459 is one of several Liberian pieces from this period sharing the same 28g copper-nickel specification — a format chosen for cost, not meaning.