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5 Dollars - Elizabeth II Shirakawa-go
| Issuer | Cook Islands |
|---|---|
| Year | 2013 |
| Type | Non-circulating coin |
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| Obverse description | Right-facing effigy of Queen Elizabeth II, diademed and wearing a pearl drop earring, as sculpted by Ian Rank-Broadley, whose initials IRB appear beneath the truncation. The legend ELIZABETH II is inscribed along the left arc of the field, with COOK ISLANDS along the right arc. The date 2013 appears in the lower exergue in large numerals against a mirror-polished proof field. |
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| Reverse script | Latin |
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| Additional information |
Shirakawa-go, the historic gassho-zukuri farmhouse village in Gifu Prefecture, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995 alongside the neighboring Gokayama hamlets. The steeply pitched thatched roofs — designed to shed the region's exceptionally heavy snowfall — are the architectural detail that made the village internationally recognizable and a natural subject for the Japanese market collector series Cook Islands was aggressively expanding in the early 2010s.
Cook Islands issued dozens of these silver rounds under licensing arrangements during this period, functioning more as bullion-adjacent collectibles than as genuine circulating currency.