50 Dollars - Elizabeth II Captain James Cook

Cook Islands issued a series of commemorative silver dollars throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s under licensing arrangements that had little to do with local monetary policy — these were collector pieces produced largely for the international numismatic market, with the islands' name and royal portrait serving mainly as legal tender framing. The James Cook connection is, at least, geographically honest: Cook's three Pacific voyages between 1768 and 1779 brought the island group to European charts, and the archipelago was named in his honor by Spanish and later British navigators.

Cook himself never set foot on the islands that bear his name.