5 Dollars Crossing the Delaware

Barbados adopted the Eastern Caribbean Dollar as its currency in 1965, replacing the British West Indies Dollar, and has since issued commemorative coinage through the Central Bank largely targeting the collector market rather than circulation. This piece belongs to a well-established category of coin programs — produced by a small nation with no direct connection to the subject matter — that exist primarily because the licensing and minting infrastructure makes them commercially viable for international distributors.

Emanuel Leutze's 1851 painting of Washington's December 1776 crossing of the Delaware River was executed in Düsseldorf, not America, and contains numerous historical inaccuracies, including the wrong flag and an anatomically impossible boat configuration for the conditions that night.