1 Tala Independence

Samoa marked the fiftieth anniversary of independence from New Zealand administration in 2012, having gained autonomy on January 1, 1962 — the first Pacific Island nation to do so in the twentieth century. The issue was struck in aluminium bronze rather than the bimetallic formats common to commemorative talas of that decade, a deliberate choice that kept production costs accessible for a central bank managing a small open economy heavily dependent on remittances.