500 Cedis

Ghana's 500 Cedis denomination was introduced in the mid-1990s as the cedi had lost catastrophic purchasing power since the 1970s — by 1996, inflation had so eroded the currency that a coin worth 500 units represented a fraction of a dollar in real terms. The denomination itself is a symptom of that devaluation spiral rather than a mark of high value.

Ghana would eventually redenominate in 2007, replacing 10,000 old cedis with one new Ghana cedi, rendering this entire coin series obsolete within a decade of issue.