50 Dinars IYDP, Piedfort

The International Year of Disabled Persons, declared by the UN for 1981, prompted a wave of commemorative issues from member states — most of them forgettable silver pieces struck in the tens of thousands. South Yemen's gold piedfort was not that. Piedforts, struck at double the normal planchet thickness, were produced in extremely limited quantities almost exclusively for collectors and diplomats, and from a state that issued almost no precious metal coinage, this piece is an anomaly by any measure.

The People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, the Arab world's only Marxist state, had nationalized its economy and maintained close ties with the Soviet Union throughout the 1970s. That a Aden-based government commissioned a gold piedfort through what was almost certainly a European contract mint says more about hard currency needs than any commemorative impulse.