50 Dollars - Elizabeth II 4th Portrait - Commonwealth Games 2006 - Tri-Metallic

Issued to mark the XVIII Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne — the first time Australia had hosted the event since Brisbane in 1982 — this piece is one of the more technically ambitious collector coins the Royal Australian Mint had produced to that point. The tri-metallic construction required bonding a .999 gold core within concentric silver and copper rings, with pad printing applied over the finished blank, a process that introduced colour detail the mint had only recently begun deploying on circulating commemoratives.

Face value of fifty dollars nominally covers the gold content, though barely.