COOK ISLANDS 50 dollars 1988 Ponce de Leon

Description

Commemorative coins in various metals and a wide varieties of topics were made for sale to collectors starting in the 1970s and continuing until now. These days they are making coins in the shape of little sculptures. Some are noted as being marketed only in certain countries.

Cook Islands is a self-governing country in free association with New Zealand, which handles foreign affairs and defense. Cook Islands nationals hold New Zealand citizenship.

Coin collectors tend to be geographically oriented. If they are not patriotically collecting the coins of only their own country, or sentimentally some other country, then perhaps they will collect a region. The Pacific islands that start with Borneo and progress eastward to Hawaii and Easter Island are culturally very varied and spread across an expanse of water three times the size of Asia. Size of these islands ranges from Australia to Nauru. Population of Indonesia 1/4 billion, Tonga100,000. Coins were made in Indonesia1000 years ago if not earlier.

By “Modern World Coins” we mean here, generally, the round, flat, shiny metal objects that people have used for money and still do. “Modern,” though, varies by location. There was some other way they were doing their economies, and then they switched over to “modern coins,” then they went toward paper money, now we’re all going toward digital, a future in which kids look at a coin and say “What’s that?” We’ll say: “We used to use those to buy things.” Kids will ask “How?” The main catalog reference is the Standard Catalog of World Coins, to which the KM numbers refer.