1990 Marshall Islands $5 Commemorative "Battle Of Britain"

Though the Marshall Islands normally uses the US dollar in everyday commerce, they did issue a large number of "legal tender coins" from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, mostly struck in base-metal by the Sunshine Mint. While they were all issued for considerably more than their face value (in American dollars) and were a nice little earner for the Mint and the Marshall Islands government, there was very little secondary market demand for them and by the mid-1990s could be readily found in bulk in coin dealers for scrap metal value - much less than face value.

As a result, there were more than a few "numismatic tourists" to the islands - people who bought up a large stockpile of coins on the secondary market for well under face value, and then brought suitcases full of them to the islands to redeem them for full face value in US dollars - with the tourists earning more than enough profit to pay for the return tickets, plus a nice tropical holiday to boot. In effect, the Marshall Islands government was paying for these people to come to the islands and forcing the government to exchange the worthless coins for US cash. This in turn led the Marshall Islands in 1997 to join the small and ignominious club of countries which have been forced to de-legalize their own recent coinage. While still technically "legal tender", there were strict restrictions placed upon redeeming them: you must appear in person at the Marshall Islands Treasury (not at a bank or store), redeem no more than 10 coins per day (later modified to only $10 worth of coins per day), present an original invoice showing the purchase of the coins (that is, you must have purchased them directly from the Sunshine Mint's mail-order marketing scheme and not second-hand from a coin dealer) and finally, a flat 10 percent fee applies to all redemptions.

So while your coin may have begun its life as an actual legal tender coin (and you will find it still listed in legal tender coin catalogues), it has since been reduced in status to a de-facto NCNLT token.

Nice acquisition, cptbilly. And thank you, Sap, for that information.

Very nice!

I have one of those, but not photographed. I won in it a contest from GO way back in 2009.

But here is his brother.

1990 Marshall Islands $5 Eisenhower