70 ECUs - Elizabeth II EEC - European Union Currencies

The ECU — European Currency Unit — was never legal tender in the conventional sense; it existed as a basket currency used for accounting within the European Monetary System from 1979. Gibraltar's decision to issue ECU-denominated collector pieces in the early 1990s was part of a broader wave of commemorative coinage from peripheral territories capitalizing on pre-Maastricht enthusiasm, before the Treaty formally set the euro on course to replace the ECU at a fixed 1:1 rate in 1999. The irony is pointed: Gibraltar, constitutionally excluded from full EU membership despite being a British Overseas Territory within Europe, struck coins denominated in a currency it had no political stake in adopting.