500 Gourdes 1980 Moscow Olympics

Haiti issued this piece as part of a wave of Olympic-themed gold coins that flooded the numismatic market throughout the late 1970s, when Caribbean and African nations discovered that licensing deals with the IOC offered a reliable stream of hard currency from Western collectors. The Moscow Games themselves became politically toxic after the U.S.-led boycott of 1980, meaning coins struck in anticipation of the event were marketed during a period of considerable diplomatic acrimony — Haiti under Duvalier fils being one of the few Western-hemisphere governments that maintained cooperative distance from both superpowers simultaneously.

KM#141 was struck two to three years before the Games it commemorates.