5 Riyals - Rashid Martin Luther King

Ajman, the smallest and poorest of the Trucial States, financed much of its early government through aggressive sale of collector coins to foreign dealers and distributors — issues that had no meaningful local circulation and were designed entirely for the philatelic and numismatic export market. This piece, commemorating an American civil rights leader with no connection to the Persian Gulf, is a frank example of that practice. The emirate produced dozens of such themed issues in the late 1960s and early 1970s, covering subjects from Apollo missions to world leaders, purely as revenue generation ahead of the 1971 federation that would form the UAE.