500 Dobras FAO

São Tomé e Príncipe issued this piece as part of the FAO's long-running program encouraging member nations to mint coins promoting food security and agricultural development — a program that produced hundreds of distinct types across dozens of countries from the 1960s onward. For an archipelago nation this small, with a population under 150,000 at the time, the chromium-clad steel composition was a practical concession to the cost of maintaining a stable circulating coinage.