50 Aurar

Iceland switched from pure bronze to bronze-plated steel for this denomination in 1969, a cost-driven response to rising copper prices that affected mint operations across Scandinavia during the late 1960s. The 1986 date falls well into the plated-steel period, when the aurar's purchasing power had been so thoroughly eroded by Iceland's chronic inflation — among the highest in the Western world through the 1970s and 80s — that the coin was largely irrelevant in daily transactions before it was eventually demonetized.