50 Centavos José Martí

Issued to mark the centennial of José Martí's birth, this coin was part of Cuba's largest commemorative program under Batista — a government that found it politically convenient to claim the revolutionary poet-hero as its own. The irony was not lost on contemporaries. Within six years, the regime that minted this coin had collapsed, and Martí's image would be repurposed by the very revolution he had inspired a century earlier.

The .900 fine silver series from this year includes multiple denominations, all struck at the Philadelphia Mint under contract.