5000 Dinara Winter Olympics 1984 - Emblem

Yugoslavia secured the 1984 Winter Olympics for Sarajevo in 1978, beating out Sapporo and Gothenburg in an IOC vote that surprised many observers — it was the first Winter Games awarded to a socialist country. The commemorative coin program began two years ahead of the event, with issues released across 1982 and 1983 to maximize foreign currency earnings, a hard-currency priority for the Yugoslav federal government throughout the early 1980s as its external debt crisis deepened.