An Interesting Cuban Coin - 40 Centavos 1962

Not long ago, a foreign friend of mine wrote me saying that he had found a coin of Fidel Castro.
I was very intrigued, because I know Castro has always been against it. There are no streets, parks, schools or any other thing in Cuba with his name! And coins are not an exception. Sure, you can find some commemorative coins with his face, but always celebrating some event in which he took part and not the man.

And it turned out that I was right. This coin indeed shows a bearded man, only that he is not Fidel Castro, but Camilo Cienfuegos, a contemporary revolutionary leader whose plane disappeared over the ocean during a night flight to Havana in the early days of the Cuban Revolution. His body or the plane were never found. He was very popular among the Cuban people.

Struck in former Czechoslovakia in 1962, this copper-nickel coin was made to commemorate his 30th Anniversary. One of the largest and heaviest modern Cuban coins, it was demonetized in the 1990s. Despite the large number struck (15,250,000 according to Krause) they are very rare since Cuban people still treasure them and they are assigned a respectable value of $5.00 in XF condition.

It seemed appropriate to me to bring this topic now, since he died precisely a day like yesterday.