Topical Themes - Pro-Democracy

Around the change of the decade from the 1980s to the 1990s, it was a frugal time for me in terms of spending on my coin hobby. It was also a time of drastic political changes in some parts of the world, and I found myself accumulating a handful of coins (and a few medals) marking some of those political changes.
The first coin that likely drew me into this topical collection was a parody coin that was published in the newspaper "World Coin News". It was a 1990-dated coin modeled on the old communist East German 20 Mark commemoratives. The coin poked fun at the "Stasi", which was the name of the East German secret police. The reverse side looked strikingly similar to the traditional East German commemoratives, with the hammer and sickle design, but instead of the legend reading "German Democratic Republic", it reads "German Demoralized Republic" (the text was actually in the native German language.) The coin also mocked all the communist youth organizations that the kids there were compelled to be a part of.
Once I had that East German parody coin, I had to get the real East German 20 Mark commemorative of the same year that depicted the reuification of Germany. The obverse features an image of the Brandenburg Gate, a symbol of German unity. Then I picked up a (West) German 10 Mark commemorative from the following year that also featured the Brandenburg Gate to make a nice set of three, all of the same size.
I also collected another few coins related to the fall of communism, that included a 1990 Poland 10,000 Zlotych commemortive for "Solidarity", the previously outlawed trade union federation founded in 1980. From Russia I obtained the 1992 One Ruble commemorative of the "Anniversary of Russian Sovereignty", that features a goddess of liberty and the parliament building. And from Romania a small nickel plated steel 1992 10 Lei coin with an olive branch over the national flag and the date "22 December 1989", indicating the overthrow of the brutal Ceaucescu regime.
Drastic political change wasn't only about the fall of communism around that time. I have a 1988 Phillipines 10 Piso "People Power Revolution" commemorative that features a crowd standing up to one of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos' tanks back in 1986. And more recently I bought a 2004 mint set from East Timor, the very first coins of the newly independent democratic nation.
In addition to the collection of coins, I have a number of related medals, including a silver round commemorating the student revolt in China's Tiananmen Square back in 1989, a medal from hand-engraved dies featuring Lech Walesa and other Polish Nobel Prize winners that was made illegally in Poland in 1983 and a silver round designed by Zane Bond featuring a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. that was part of a campaign for United States coin design reform in the late 1980s.
Overall it's a humble little collection, yet reflecting aspects of large movements of people around the world.