75 Rials - Mohammad Rezā Pahlavī Stone of Cyrus II

Issued as part of the vast commemorative program surrounding the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian Empire, this coin was one of dozens of denominations released by the Imperial Iranian government in October 1971 — an event staged almost entirely for international consumption. The celebrations at Persepolis, attended by nearly seventy heads of state, cost an estimated $100–$200 million and were widely criticized as a personal vanity project by the Shah, with food flown in from Maxim's of Paris while rural Iran remained in poverty.

The Cyrus Cylinder itself, housed in the British Museum, had been briefly loaned to Tehran for the occasion — a pointed diplomatic gesture about the antiquity of Iranian sovereignty that the Shah deployed deliberately.