50 Dollars Year of the Ox

The Marshall Islands operated one of the more aggressive commemorative programs of the 1990s, issuing dozens of $50 silver pieces annually for the collector market with virtually no domestic circulation. This piece marks the Year of the Ox in the Chinese lunar calendar cycle — a series the islands ran as a straightforward export product, leveraging their U.S. dollar-pegged currency status to produce coins that required no backing beyond the face of the legislation authorizing them.