50 Dollars Year of the Rat

The Marshall Islands used its post-Compact of Free Association monetary authority aggressively throughout the 1990s, issuing dozens of commemorative silver dollars targeting collector markets with no intention of circulating. This Lunar series piece is part of that programme — coins produced under contract by foreign mints and sold directly to dealers and distributors, never touching the domestic economy of a nation with fewer than 60,000 people.

KM#281 is one of several near-identical sovereign lunar issues from Pacific island states during this period, all competing for the same collector dollar.