50 Soʻm Independence

Issued to mark the tenth anniversary of Uzbekistan's independence from the Soviet Union, declared on September 1, 1991. The early 2000s were a period of severe currency stress in Uzbekistan — the som had lost enormous purchasing power through the 1990s, and parallel black market exchange rates for US dollars dwarfed the official rate by a factor of several times. A commemorative 50 som coin was, in practical terms, nearly worthless as spending money by the time it was struck, which explains why most survivors show little or no wear.