500 Balboas Birth of Balboa

Vasco Núñez de Balboa was executed on charges of treason in 1519 — just six years after becoming the first European to sight the Pacific from the American continent. Panama's decision to place him on its highest-denomination gold coin was partly rehabilitative, recasting a convicted traitor as a founding national symbol in the years leading up to the 1977 Carter-Torrijos Treaties that would eventually return the Canal Zone to Panamanian sovereignty.

The series ran across three years primarily to satisfy collector demand rather than any monetary need; these coins never circulated.