500 Pesos Che Guevara

Cuba issued bimetallic collector pieces through the 1990s and into the 2000s partly as hard-currency earners — priced for foreign collectors and tourists rather than domestic circulation, since ordinary Cubans had no access to peso-denominated instruments of this value. Guevara's face had been legal-tender material since the 1960s peso notes, but the 2000 issue escalated that iconography into precious metal at a moment when the Cuban economy was still clawing back from the "Special Period" collapse triggered by Soviet dissolution.

The dual KM references suggest this type was catalogued under separate entries in different World Coin editions — a known inconsistency in Krause coverage of Cuban commemoratives from this period.