50 Francs Independence

Senegal's 1968 gold issue marks the eighth anniversary of independence from France, part of a broader wave of commemorative coinage that newly sovereign African states used to establish numismatic credibility on the international market — and to generate hard currency through collector sales abroad rather than domestic circulation. Few of these pieces ever spent a day in a Senegalese pocket.

The .900 fineness follows the old Latin Monetary Union standard, a deliberate echo of the French monetary system Senegal had only recently left.