5 Lekë Durazzo

Issued under Enver Hoxha's regime — though Hoxha himself died in April 1985, two years before this coin was struck — the 1987 series appeared during the transitional grip of Ramiz Alia, who was quietly loosening Albania's pathological isolation without openly dismantling it. Domestic coinage in this period served the hermetically closed Albanian economy, where foreign currency possession was a criminal offense and the lek circulated in a market with chronic shortages of basic goods.

Durazzo is the Italian name for Durrës, Albania's principal port, occupied and contested repeatedly across centuries of Venetian, Ottoman, and Italian rule.